Miami, FL
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
One good season can set the standard of what the Miami Hurricanes can be for the future under Jai Lucas.
Lucas nearly broke many single-season records as a first-year head coach, but that didn’t stop him from learning from mistakes that could have helped him improve the following season. However, he has three returning players, so it is a brand new team for the upstart head coach.
Yeah, for me it’s like coaching a whole new team,” Lucas said on an appearance on the “Hoops HQ” basketball podcast. “I think something that goes into the past is you have something that fits, and you just try to rinse and repeat. That’s kind of how a lot of programs are built. But now with this portal era, you don’t know what you’re going to get every year. My team looks completely different than before, so I had to build it differently.”
Lucas dove into some of his transfer targets and why they fit well with the Canes, starting with his new star point guard, Acaden Lewis.
“It started with being able to get a really good point guard,” Lucas said. “We had one last year in Tre Donaldson, and that’s where Acaden came into play. Having somebody you feel can run the team, but also has the ability to take over games. Watching his stuff in the portal and doing the analytics, he’s one of the best point guards in the country pound for pound with what he’s able to do and how he’s able to create.
“Like I talked about earlier, we had a prior relationship that went back to when I was at Duke and we recruited him there. So it was kind of an easy recruitment once the portal opened and I was able to talk to him.”
Lewis is complemented with the Canes new star defensive anchor Somto Cyril.
“Then I wanted a big, and that’s where Somto came in,” Lucas continued. “He played for a coach who is on staff now, Eric Pastrana, at Georgia, so that was kind of the relationship built there.
However, the biggest missing link from last season was shooting and depth. Lucas got that and loves how his team feels and looks heading into the summer.
“Once we got those two pieces along with Shelton and Dante, who we had coming back, the one thing I knew we missed last year and needed this year was shooting. That’s where Nick Dorn, Brent Bland, DeShawn Goode, and some of these other guys who will be high level complementary pieces came into play with our foundational pieces like Acaden, Shelton, Dante, Somto, those guys.
“Then we wanted to get more depth than we had last year where we played about six or seven. I wanted to be able to play eight plus, maybe nine this year. So we focused on that, focused on the shooting, but also wanted to have size. Nick’s size at 6 foot 7 and his ability to shoot, and what he did at Elon and then having it transfer over to what he was able to do in a Power Five conference, I felt was a fit for what we want to do here.”
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TA Realty bought back an industrial park near Miami International Airport, paying $47.6 million, property records show.
Called Webster Business Park, the 178,521-square-foot property includes four buildings at 7200 Northwest 25th Street, sandwiched between Palmetto Expressway and the Miami airport. The 7.8-acre campus was built in the 1970s.
The transaction equates to about $267 a square foot.
Boston-based TA Realty owned the asset between 2005 and 2016, before selling it for $16.6 million to Cofe Properties. AEW Capital Management, another Boston-based investor which served as the seller in the recent sale, purchased the campus for $25 million in 2019.
The purchase marks at least the second time TA Realty has reacquired a South Florida asset it previously owned. In October, the firm paid $193 million for a 476-unit multifamily community in Palm Beach Gardens — roughly $89 million more than the price at which it sold the property in 2017.
On the industrial front, TA Realty has been building up its portfolio in Miami-Dade County. Last year, it bought a 43-acre industrial development site for $106 million, and a 361,461-square-foot portfolio for $84 million. The previous year, it paid $160 million for a four-building, 509,522-square-foot campus nearby.
Representatives for TA Realty and AEW Capital Management did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Julia Echikson can be reached at jechikson@commercialobserver.com.
Two separate tragic incidents in Miami’s waters — both tied to prominent local real estate figures and which each ended in the death of a teen — are headed for very different legal outcomes.
Commercial broker George Pino, CEO of Doral-based State Street Realty, faces a felony vessel homicide charge, and his attorneys recently filed a slew of court motions seeking to keep statements made by Pino and other information related to his alleged alcohol consumption before the crash from being mentioned by prosecutors during his trial, slated to start on June 1, the Miami Herald reported.
Pino was steering the boat on Biscayne Bay on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend in 2022 with 14 occupants, including his wife, daughter and 11 other teenage girls when the craft crashed into a concrete channel marker. The crash killed 17-year-old Luciana “Lucy” Fernandez and left Katerina “Katy” Puig, now 21, with a lifetime of physical disabilities.
Pino’s defense team is asking the court to exclude during trial a statement he made to an investigator the night of the crash that the wake of a larger boat headed toward his vessel and caused the crash.
His attorneys are asking Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez to bar testimony from the jury trial that recounts a witness’ statement that Pino had bloodshot eyes the night of the crash and that he had told police he had had “two beers” that day. The defense also wants to preclude the jury from hearing that Pino’s boat contained 61 empty alcohol containers when it was pulled out from the water after the crash.
Pino had given some of his statements to police and an investigator before he was read his Miranda rights, according to his attorneys.
Pino’s attorneys also filed motions to dismiss the criminal charges or to move the trial to Palm Beach or Orlando due to extensive media coverage of the crash in Miami-Dade County.
Pino originally faced misdemeanor charges of careless boating, but prosecutors issued the more serious vessel homicide charge in 2024 after a witness came forward.
This year, a neurologist issued a report on whether Pino had suffered a traumatic brain injury, causing amnesia and false memories for his recollection of the incident. The neurologist was hired by Pino’s attorneys, indicating they may use the doctor’s testimony in the trial.
In another fatal incident in Miami’s waters that devastated the real estate community and the city as a whole, 15-year-old Ella Riley Adler –– daughter of Adler Real Estate Partners’ Matthew Adler –– died in a 2024 incident. Adler was wakeboarding in May 2024 in waters off Key Biscayne. She had fallen off her wakeboard when another boat struck her.
The captain of the yacht that was towing the 15-year-old struck a plea deal, the Miami Herald reported.
Edmund Richard Hartley pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of navigational rule violations. Under the plea deal, prosecutors dropped two other misdemeanor charges, and Hartley was ordered to complete a boating safety course, barred from steering a vessel for 60 days starting next month, and was sentenced to six months probation. For the second charge, he also faces a second six-month probation term, though prosecutors could terminate this if he completes the first term. In addition, no criminal conviction will appear on Hartley’s record.
Adler’s parents approved of the plea deal, though Matthew Adler told Hartley during a court hearing on Tuesday that he should have been more cautious.
“At just 15 years old, Ella was flourishing. Her final year was in many ways her happiest and most exciting,” Matthew Adler said in court, the publication reported. “She was thriving academically, participating in debate, performing in the school musical ‘Chicago’ and growing into an exceptional young woman with limitless potential ahead of her.”
The captain of the boat that struck Adler, Carlos Guillermo “Bill” Alonso, also received a deal, pleading guilty to misdemeanor careless boating charges. He was sentenced to six months of probation and ordered to complete a boater safety course.
The Adler family started the Ella Ridley Adler Foundation that supports Jewish life, education and art. —Lidia Dinkova
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