MIAMI (Reuters) - New dad Max Verstappen stormed to pole position at the Miami Formula One Grand Prix ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Days after the Red Bull driver and partner Kelly Piquet welcomed daughter Lily, his first child, the four-time champion set a blistering lap of one minute 26.204 seconds around the Hard Rock Stadium.
The pole was an immediate and impressively firm response to being demoted to last in the wet earlier sprint race following a 10-second penalty for an unsafe release in the pit lane and collision with Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli.
Norris, winner in Miami last year after Verstappen also secured pole for that race, was 0.065 slower and possibly taking comfort in the knowledge that no driver has won from pole at the track since the race debuted in 2022.
Antonelli, the 18-year-old who became the youngest ever pole sitter in the sprint, qualified third fastest with McLaren’s championship leader Oscar Piastri completing the second row in fourth.
Norris had earlier won the sprint, trimming second-placed Australian Piastri’s advantage to nine points, and now has a great chance to make further inroads.
George Russell qualified fifth for Mercedes with Williams’ Carlos Sainz sixth and teammate Alex Albon seventh to make up for the disappointment of being demoted from the points in the sprint.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc will start eighth, after missing the sprint race due to a crash on the way from the pit lane to the starting grid, and Esteban Ocon qualified ninth for Haas with Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda 10th.
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, third in the sprint, came swiftly back down to earth when he qualified only 12th for Ferrari.
Further back, Jack Doohan made it to the second phase and outqualified Alpine teammate Pierre Gasly for the first time with 14th place.