The Miami International Speedway , a temporary facility surrounding the Miami Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium , featured a varied mix of medium to high speed corners, a long straightaway, and a very tight section below a freeway.
The 5.41km track did not put on much of a show, which is partly attributed to the lack of grip on the off-track surface. However, it generally received modest praise from the drivers, who only singled out the bumpy chicane at Turn 14-15 as an area for improvement.
Before the race, this combination of sector 2 was branded as the Mickey Mouse or Formula E chicane. Unlike the rest, Charles Leclerc, who started from pole but couldn’t help but be overtaken by Max Verstappen, appears to be one one of the few riders who enjoyed the challenge posed by this chicane.
Even so, the Monegasque also recognized, thus joining his teammates, that a change in the layout could improve the show.
“I think I’m the only driver on the grid who did like this chicane. I’ve enjoyed it,” shared the Ferrari driver. “But on the other hand, I agree that, for the show, I think we can do better. Following [the driver in front] was not easy in that area, and also because of the visibility. a car in front because you have to be very precise on the curbs”.
“That makes it even more difficult to follow [the car in front] but other than that I really enjoyed it.
The rest of the drivers, however, do not seem to share Leclerc’s idea of enjoying the chicane, with Lewis Hamilton even saying that it reminded him of a car park he used as a child to practice with his kart.
His own teammate at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz, who climbed to the third podium box, considered that getting over the chicane curbs well required a bit of luck.
Due to the limited escape available at the next corner, the Spaniard agreed with his teammates that a slow chicane was needed at that part of the circuit, but assured that the drivers were already discussing possible adjustments with F1 to produce a better curve.
“I think it’s a chicane that, with this generation of cars that are heavy, that are wide, just when you go through those two curbs at the apex, it almost feels like you need a little bit of luck to take it and sometimes you do it at a weird angle and the car bounces a lot, then sometimes you nail it and win one or two tenths”, explained the Spaniard.
“It’s an unnatural corner. I think it’s still necessary because there’s not a lot of room there and you have to go pretty slow as you approach 16 because there’s no escape. So we need something slow, we need something narrow.”
“It’s just the nature of the two corners that are there, the way they’ve been put together isn’t a problem. It’s a new track that’s always going to go through these phases and we’re already in contact with FOM, with Ross [Brawn , General Manager of F1] and his team to fix it and put together a better circuit.”
Race winner Verstappen hopes the circuit will be revamped for next year after claiming he almost lost consciousness from bouncing off the high curbs.
“I think at the track level we can improve on a number of areas,” explained the Red Bull driver. “The chicane at Turns 14 and 15 is a bit of a tricky combination. I think if I had been in a kart it would have been a nice chicane to use, but not in an F1 car like we have today.
“I remember in the four laps I did on Friday, I almost passed out because I hit the first curb and my head bounced from left to right at least five, six times, but very badly.
“If you go a little too far, just because [the car] is so long, so wide, so stiff and super heavy, that little curb just isn’t made for [these cars], to tell you the truth.
“So maybe we need to change the curb layout now, make it a bit more like a progressive ramp and look a bit nicer to get over it. Maybe that will help. But yeah, it’s very slow and I think our cars They’d look a lot better if it was a slightly more seamless combination.”
