03/05/2026

theSun on Sunday MAY 3, 2026

SPORTS 12

Max happy with updates but still sees weekness

been a really positive step for us. Last few races we were over a second behind. I would say we have almost halved that gap now,” Verstappen said. “So that’s positive. We’re still very weak in the first sector, which is mainly high speed. So we know that we need to work on that. “But, yeah, the rest seemed all a bit more together. So a bit happier with that. At least it seems like we have cleared a little bit the midfield.” – Agencies

in a similar way to Ferrari’s exhaust winglet seen earlier this season. Giving his first verdict of the updated RB22, Verstappen felt that the car was “more together”; he took it to fifth on the grid for the Miami sprint race, just under 0.6s off Lando Norris’ pole time. By comparison, Verstappen missed the Q3 cut-off in Suzuka, having been 1.2s slower than Kimi Antonelli in Q2. “It feels more together. Of course, there are still things that we are working on. But it’s

had its own version in development long before it was ever seen in the flesh. The team also has new sidepods, increasing their width from side-to-side to incorporate a waterslide-like ramp along the top surface to offer more direction to the airflow passing over the top. To satisfy the reprofiled sidepods, the engine cover and the floor have been reworked. Furthermore, the exhaust also appears to have a flap at the exit port to work

MAX VERSTAPPEN believes that Red Bull’s wealth of upgrades for the Miami Grand Prix have so far “almost halved” the gap to the leaders, but still sees weaknesses in this year’s RB22 to work on. Red Bull caught the eye with its own interpretation of the “Macarena” rear wing; when the active aero system is turned on for straight mode, the wing rotates around 180°. Although Ferrari was first seen in testing with the device, Red Bull was adamant that it

to work are still things that we are working on. But it’s midfield.” – Agencies

McLaren’s Lando Norris faces a huge challenge in defending his F1 title. –REUTERSPIC

Can Norris defend his F1 title? After five weeks off, F1’s return to Miami with tweaks that makes it feel like the start of the season again BY KIERAN JACKSON

said the Italian. “Especially from an aerodynamic upgrades point of view… so we can keep up with this plan. “Obviously, the fact that the calendar has been changed helped. I’m sure it helped all the other teams, who could work more streamlined towards upgrading the car rather than being busy with racing. “But I could say overall that, across Miami and (next race) Canada, we will see an entirely new MCL40. I would like to stress that this is what I would expect of most of our competitors so (it is) not necessarily going to be a shift in the pecking order… it will be effectively just a check who has been able to add more performance within the same time frame.” Despite Stella playing it down, McLaren offer the most exciting route to a title battle beyond Antonelli and George Russell’s intra-team tilt. Unlike Ferrari and Red Bull’s in-house projects, they use a Mercedes engine – clearly the best on the grid – and have the know-how of recent constructors’ triumphs. Miami, therefore, represents a line in the sand: judge their season from now. If McLaren do not haul in some of the deficit to Mercedes in Miami, Norris can wave goodbye to a potential title defence. Yet if the gap has closed, even slightly, the performance curve should be heading in a papaya direction. – The Independent

further, honestly. “I think when you start to cover up some problems, you also reveal other issues, so there’s only so much you can do with the rules that you have to keep things. “I think we would all love more in the direction that they’ve gone, but some of those are more hardware, bigger things. Those are hard things to change in the middle of a season when you have one team dominating and doing very well and other teams struggling. “So it’s difficult from that end to do a lot more, but they’ve moved things in the right direction, especially for qualifying. The race really isn’t going to be that different. Some things are not going to change that much. Qualifying should be a bit more flat out qualifying style laps, which is a nice thing, it’s what we wanted as drivers.” McLaren, despite their uninspiring start to their title defence, are decidedly chirpy. Oscar Piastri failed to start his home race in Melbourne. Both Norris and Piastri failed to start in China. The Briton, the reigning world champion, is yet to register a podium and already trails championship leader Kimi Antonelli by 47 points. Team principal Andrea Stella revealed why McLaren is unperturbed by their poor start: they are set to bring a “completely new car” to Miami and beyond. “That (a new car) was always the idea,”

Formula 1 returns this weekend in Miami after a five-week hiatus, following the cancellation of races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and to all intents and purposes, it feels like the 2026 campaign starts now. Tweaks to the regulations made in the break, primarily to promote flat-out driving in qualifying and reduce dramatic in-race closing speeds and the risk of massive crashes like Ollie Bearman’s in Japan, will debut in the cut-and-thrust world of a sprint weekend, in the fifth iteration of the temporary 19-turn street circuit, configured around the 60,000 capacity Hard Rock Stadium, which plays host to the paddock. The big question is: how much have the chief protagonists reeled in frontrunners Mercedes? If at all? “It’s too impossible to compare,” Norris said, when discussing the experience of driving previous generations compared to the cars in 2026. “If you ask me now, do I still enjoy the older cars more? Yes. I find it hard for anyone to say they enjoy driving these cars as much as previous generations … I think it’s obviously possible (that someone else could feel that way). “But it’s still our job to adapt to these cars we have now. They’re good in different ways. They should be getting better over time. It’s tough to go that much

ON the face of it, McLaren’s latest example of sporting-corporate muscle-flexing seems a tad peculiar. Drifting away from the principles of their racing-mad founding father, quite what Bruce McLaren would have made of the papaya-clad outfit expanding into golf equipment – with Justin Rose their top-tier signing, posing alongside Lando Norris (himself a keen golfer) at a lavish Floridian launch on Wednesday – remains to be seen. Yet group CEO Zak Brown has overseen remarkable growth in the last half-dozen years. In 2020, McLaren Racing were valued at £560 million (RM3b). Last September, Forbes estimated the team alone were worth approximately £4 billion (RM21.6b), behind only Mercedes and Ferrari in F1 terms. They have well over 50 sponsors, most adorned on the car of the reigning world champions. And, despite a topsy-turvy start on the Formula 1 racetrack this season, they’re hungry for more. “I think we can have a good season, even if we’re not where we want to be right now,” Norris said, during the enforced spring break. “Although we haven’t started the season where we want to be, we still want to push hard for the championship.”