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What we learned about the pecking order after Miami

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What we learned about the pecking order after Miami


After a lengthier than normal break, the F1 circus reconvened in Miami for the second Sprint weekend of the season as the newly upgraded cars broke cover – causing a few changes to the pecking order.

While the sight of Kimi Antonelli standing on the top step of the rostrum is not exactly unusual this season, Mercedes were finally beaten to a win when Lando Norris was victorious in the Sprint.

But it wasn’t just the battle up front that took on a different complexion in Miami, with the midfield also seeing a few shuffles as some upgrades packages did the trick, while others have more work to do…

Mercedes still the team to beat – just

Of the big four teams, Mercedes brought by far the fewest upgrades to Miami. Their planned development program had the first big raft of parts being bolted onto the car for Montreal, and they have stuck to that schedule despite the unexpected break.

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They did have tweaks to their front brake ducts and exhaust, but these were expected to buy them a few fractions rather than a big chunk of time.

Their lack of parts coupled with their rivals bringing bigger packages certainly seemed to reduce the deficit the others had to the Silver Arrows, with both Antonelli and George Russell finishing down the order in FP1. That raised eyebrows as Mercedes looked beatable for the first time this year, something seemingly confirmed when Norris took Sprint pole and then won the 19-lap dash, leading home a McLaren 1-2.

With no Mercedes car in the top three, it suddenly looked like game on at the front. But then Antonelli pulled a brilliant lap out of the bag to take pole for the Grand Prix, and went on to win his third race of the season.

Given the respective lack of upgrades, the fact Antonelli was still able to win points to Mercedes enjoying an advantage that might only grow when their own big package of parts arrives. But Norris was firmly of the belief over the radio after the chequered flag that that was a victory McLaren threw away.

One thing was for sure – Mercedes might have won the Miami Grand Prix, but they did not canter away into the distance. Sunday was Antonelli’s narrowest winning margin, as their rivals have very much closed the gap.

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McLaren leapfrog Ferrari

Ferrari were the closest challengers to Mercedes at the start of the season, with their drivers scoring a podium in each of the first three races. The Scuderia brought a huge upgrade package to Miami, as did McLaren.

In the early stages of the weekend, it looked like Charles Leclerc was the man to beat but then Norris got into a rhythm and took pole for the Sprint by a healthy margin. In clean air he was able to dominate the dash on Saturday, with Piastri picking off a slow-starting Antonelli to make it a McLaren 1-2.

The upgrades certainly look to have worked for both teams, but McLaren being powered by the Mercedes engine gave them an advantage down the straights, and they certainly seem to be getting more out of their power unit round by round.

Norris came agonisingly close to really challenging Antonelli on Sunday, a slow in-lap combined with being undercut costing him the chance of a win. But while that was disappointing, the overall performance from McLaren across the weekend was nothing but encouraging.

“I think Mercedes still possess a couple of tenths advantage over anybody else, this was most noticeable today in the race,” admitted Andrea Stella afterwards, while Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur said overheating was something that cost Ferrari on Sunday, and reiterated that it will be a “full push” development-wise until the end of the year.

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But neither team is giving up, and as both team bosses said, it is still very early in the season with plenty of time to improve.

Red Bull jump back into the mix up front

Red Bull have had arguably the toughest start to the new era of regulations of the big four teams, and have found themselves battling the midfield runners more than their usual rivals.

But their big upgrade package paid dividends in Miami, while their understanding of the RB22 also grew, meaning they could do a better job of optimising the set-up to the liking of both drivers. Max Verstappen was the fastest he has been all year as he put in a storming lap in Qualifying to grab second on the grid.

Were it not for an uncharacteristic spin through Turns 1 and 2, the Dutchman might have found himself in the lead of the race. That is quite the turnaround from his sixth-place in Australia, which was his best result from the first three races.

As it was, the spin removed him from a realistic shot at the podium, but fifth was still a strong result considering how far back he dropped after that first lap incident. The Dutchman was fighting with the Ferraris, McLarens and the Mercedes of Russell on merit – and not looking outclassed.

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Laurent Mekies praised “the size of the progress” the team have made after the race, citing their gains over one lap in Qualifying as an obvious place Red Bull have improved since the start of the season.

But while they might be back in the fight with their fellow front runners, Red Bull remains some way off a race win on current form. The next upgrade package cannot arrive quickly enough.

Alpine lead the midfield pack

There were four teams who settled themselves into the midfield fight at the start of the season – Alpine, Haas, Racing Bulls and Audi. But in Miami, it was very clear who out of those four had made the biggest step.

In fairness, Alpine brought the biggest upgrade package, with Haas and Racing Bulls set to bring theirs to Montreal next time out. So they might have expected to be quicker than their rivals, but things went better than expected with both Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto being the only midfield runners to make it to SQ3 and then Q3.

Gasly delivered a P8 in the Sprint for one point, and Colapinto managed a career-best seventh in the Grand Prix to ensure Alpine crept ahead of Haas in the Constructors’. Their Mercedes-powered car looks good down the straights, and the team seem to be developing in the right direction too.

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But it could all change when the others bolt on more upgrades next time around.

Williams remain a mystery

The true pace of Williams remains an unknown in 2026. They are faster than Aston Martin and Cadillac, but certainly were not on the pace of the four midfield teams thanks to an overweight car.

When asked about performance prior to the weekend, both Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz were not expecting miracles, especially as all that excess weight has not come off the car – they expect that to be a season-long project.

But they did have some upgrades, and that certainly seemed to help as Williams got both cars into Q2 for the first time this season. From there, they had a solid race and managed to sneak into the points with both cars too, Sainz finishing ninth and Albon P10.

That meant technically they leapfrogged Haas and Racing Bulls for pure performance – no mean feat all things considered.

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“It’s great to see the hard work of the last five weeks, and the aero package all adding up, putting us in stronger place than we started the season,” said James Vowles afterwards.

“It’s still a long road, but the positive news is that there’s more performance to come throughout the rest of the season.”

And that bodes well for Williams permanently swelling the four midfield teams into a group of five.



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Miami, FL

3 hurt in fire on Lincoln Road that started underground

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3 hurt in fire on Lincoln Road that started underground


Three people were hurt after a building caught fire on Lincoln Road on Sunday, according to authorities.

The Miami Beach Fire Department said it was working a fire near 230 Lincoln Road.

The flames had spread from a fire in a manhole that “ignited an FPL vault of an adjacent building,” officials said.

Three people were taken to Mount Sinai Medical Center with minor injuries.

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The building was evacuated, and FPL has shut off power to the surrounding area, the fire department said.

Drivers were asked to avoid the area of Collins Avenue between 16th and 17th streets while crews worked the scene.



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“Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta” star Tommie Lee among 6 arrested during World Cup match in Miami, sheriff says

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“Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta” star Tommie Lee among 6 arrested during World Cup match in Miami, sheriff says


Reality television personality Tommie Lee — whose real name is Atasha Jefferson — best known for her appearances on “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta,” was among six people arrested during the England vs. Norway FIFA World Cup match in Miami on Saturday, according to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.  

The sheriff’s office said 60,024 fans attended the match. Deputies also reported 19 ejections from the stadium, adding that all incidents were isolated and handled quickly.  

Authorities have not yet released the circumstances surrounding Jefferson’s arrest or any charges she may face.

A social media account that regularly reports celebrity news claimed Sunday that Jefferson was arrested July 11 and released July 12 after posting a $1,000 bond. The post also alleged she is facing a felony charge of interference with a sporting or entertainment event and said she later shared a video on Snapchat appearing to be in good spirits after her release.

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What we don’t know

CBS News has not independently verified those claims, including the reported charge, bond amount or release information, and Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office has not publicly confirmed those details.

CBS News has also not independently verified what led to the encounter, and the sheriff’s office has not said what prompted deputies to take Jefferson into custody.

CBS News has requested Jefferson’s arrest report, booking information and any charging documents from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office. A request for comment has also been sent to Jefferson’s representatives.

Reality TV star’s legal troubles in South Florida amid World Cup festivities

Jefferson rose to national prominence as one of the breakout personalities on “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta” before later appearing on several Zeus Network reality series, where she has remained a frequent cast member.

This is not Jefferson’s first legal issue in South Florida. In 2024, she was arrested in Miami Beach on a battery charge following an incident outside LIV Nightclub. Court records from that case alleged she physically confronted another person before officers took her into custody.  

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Saturday’s arrest comes as Miami continues hosting FIFA World Cup matches that have drawn tens of thousands of fans from around the world. Despite the arrests and ejections, the sheriff’s office said the event proceeded safely and described the incidents as isolated.  

This is a developing story. CBS News will update this article as additional information, including the exact circumstances surrounding Jefferson’s arrest and any charges, becomes available.



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Why I’m Not Worried About Giannis in Miami

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Why I’m Not Worried About Giannis in Miami


The reaction to the trade was predictable. The moment Pat Riley landed his whale and the Heat sent most of their young talent and a war chest of draft picks to Milwaukee for Giannis Antetokounmpo, the conversation turned away from how Miami finally landed the star they had been seeking, to calf strains and Giannis not being the superstar player that he once was.

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“He only played 36 games last year.” ”The calf injuries keep coming back.” “He’s 31, turning 32.” “They bet the franchise on a body that’s breaking down.”

Various voices on Giannis Antetokounmpo

I’ve spent Over 15 years working with youth, collegiate and pro athletes on exactly this question, not “is he hurt,” but “what does this injury actually mean for what comes next.” And I’ll say it plainly: I’M NOT WORRIED ABOUT GIANNIS. Not in the way the panic merchants want you to be.

Let me be clear about what I’m NOT claiming. I’m not his trainer. I don’t have his imaging, his force-plate data, or his medical file. And I’m not going to insult you by telling you calf strains are nothing, because in a 31-year-old NBA forward with 13 years in the NBA, they are decidedly something. The fear has a real basis.

The soleus and the gastrocnemius, which are the two muscles of your calf, both funnel down into the Achilles tendon. When a calf is compromised and an athlete returns before it has its full capacity back, the load it can’t absorb has to go somewhere, and the Achilles is next in line. We’ve watched it happen on the biggest stages. Those are the facts and I take it seriously. I just don’t think it’s the story here.

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Here’s why…

He’s one of the most durable superstars of his era

Before we talk about what’s fragile, look at what’s been bulletproof. Strip away the two COVID-compressed seasons that the entire league played short, and strip away last year (where he wa shut down by the team), and across his other ten campaigns Giannis averaged roughly 73 games a season and never once dipped below 63. He cleared 72 games in 7 different seasons. For more than a decade, the single most physically violent player in basketball, a 6’11”, 250+ pound freight train who initiates more contact per possession than almost anyone alive — was, by availability, an iron man.

Tissue tolerance, connective-tissue quality, recovery capacity, and movement efficiency are stable characteristics of an athlete, and Giannis has eleven years of evidence that his are elite. One brutal season doesn’t erase that baseline. When a historically available athlete has one wrecked year, the honest question should be “what was different about that year.” And a lot was.

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The injuries are soft tissue, not structural

Here’s the piece that many are missing, and it’s the heart of my optimism. Call me a fan if you want, but I hate seeing ANYONE get injured. I’m rooting for Giannis to bounce back.

There are two broad categories of injury, and they age completely differently. The first is structural: torn ligaments, ruptured tendons, cartilage and joint degeneration, stress fractures. These leave a permanent mark. A reconstructed ACL is never the original. Cartilage doesn’t grow back. These are the injuries that genuinely shorten careers, because the tissue itself is changed forever and the clock only runs one direction.

The second category is soft-tissue strains or muscle. A calf strain, a groin strain, a hamstring pull. And muscle is the one tissue in the lower body that, when managed properly, heals back to full structural integrity. It is not a cumulative wound. A calf you strained in December and rehabbed correctly is not a weaker calf in March; it’s a healed calf. There’s no scar that compounds the way an arthritic joint compounds. Strains are frustrating, they’re disruptive to a season, and they recur when you rush them, but they are not a countdown timer ticking toward catastrophe.

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Now go down Giannis’s list from last season: a low-grade groin strain. A calf strain. A re-aggravated calf. An ankle sprain. A knee hyperextension with a bone bruise. Look at that honestly. The ankle sprain is acute meaning it’s a one-off mechanical event as opposed to a sign of decay. The knee hyperextension and bone bruise are traumatic. That could be somebody’s leg, a bad landing, a freak gather (no pun intended). A bone bruise heals. None of those four are degenerative. None of them are the kind of injury that feeds the next one.

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Which leaves the calf. The one real recurrence. So let’s talk about the calf specifically, because that’s where the argument is actually won or lost.

What a soleus strain is

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Cleveland Clinic

Your calf is two muscles doing two different jobs. The gastrocnemius is the showy one that crosses both the knee and the ankle, it’s fast-twitch, it’s what fires when you sprint and explode off the floor. The soleus sits underneath it, crosses only the ankle, and it’s the endurance muscle. It’s considered the postural workhorse that absorbs force every time you decelerate, land, and push off, thousands of times a night in the case of many athletes. Giannis’s recurring problem has been the soleus.

Soleus strains are classic high-mileage, fatigue-and-load injuries. They show up in athletes who run an enormous volume on a heavy frame which is the literal job description of a player who logged the third-highest workload on a bad team.

And here’s the critical part: soleus strains are notoriously slow to heal and notoriously easy to re-tweak. The calf is one of hardest lower-leg structures to truly load-test before return. It can pass every clinical check, feel 100 percent walking and even jogging, and still not have the deep capacity to handle a full-speed game’s worth of repeated max-effort decelerations. Return a week early and you’re injuring healed tissue that hadn’t been rebuilt to game-level capacity yet.

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Feb 6, 2024; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers talks to forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) against the Phoenix Suns at Footprint Center. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports | USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect

Last season was the worst possible environment for getting that management right. Consider the context Giannis was actually operating in. Milwaukee went 32-50 and missed the playoffs. The franchise eventually fired its coach.

Giannis spent the entire year as the center of a trade saga that, by every report, had him wanting out for over a year. A declining team with a disgruntled superstar and a front office weighing his trade value against his health is the textbook setup for muddled, hurried, incentive-conflicted return decisions which are exactly the conditions under which a soleus strain becomes two soleus strains.

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Now change the environment as he lands in Miami. Known for being an organization with a near-mythological reputation for conditioning and body management, a culture that has rehabilitated and extended careers other teams gave up on.

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He pairs with Bam Adebayo, which means for the first time in years Giannis doesn’t have to be the entire offensive and defensive engine every single night. As of now the roster isn’t fully complete but they will add to that so that there’s lower usage and a shared load. Real return-to-play standards instead of playoff-desperation math. You take the most fixable injury pattern on his chart and drop it into the best possible setting to fix it.

Feb 13, 2024; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA; Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) drives against Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo (13) in the first half at Fiserv Forum. Mandatory Credit: Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports | USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect
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His game is built to age

There’s a movement argument too. Giannis isn’t a stop-start, pull-up, hard-cut guard whose game is one violent deceleration after another. He’s a downhill, long-stride force athlete. His value comes from length, gather, straight-line pressure, rim protection, and playmaking. Those are skills that lean on size and feel, and they degrade gracefully with age in a way that twitchy, change-of-direction games don’t. The same frame that makes him an injury talking point is the frame that lets him dominate without living on the edge of his physical limits every possession.

What would actually change my mind? If the recurring issue were structural, like a partial Achilles tear, chronic patellar tendon breakdown that imaging showed was degenerating, cartilage loss in the knee, I’d be writing a very different column.

If he came back this season and strained the same calf a third and fourth time despite a clean environment and proper protocols, that would tell me something about the tissue I can’t see. And the Achilles risk that follows calf injuries in some athletes is real enough that it should govern how Miami brings him back: slowly, on capacity-based criteria.

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EVERY great athlete in his thirties requires careful management. That’s just the truth.

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I’m not telling you he’s invincible. But I’m not willing to bet against eleven years of durability and the most fixable problem on the chart if you want. I’ll take the Greek Freak, the new setting, and the science that we’ll all be watching a productive age-32 season with a lot less fear than the headlines are selling you.

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