Two corners. That is how long Max Verstappen's 2026 Miami Grand Prix as a leader lasted before a snap of oversteer at the exit of turn two pitched the Red Bull into a spin and triggered the chain reaction that ended teammate Isack Hadjar's afternoon.
Verstappen had launched perfectly from second to take the lead from Antonelli into turn one. The exit of turn two undid all of it. As the Red Bull rotated, Hadjar — who had been one of the day's main beneficiaries of Verstappen's run — could not avoid the spinning car and ended up in the wall.
"I could see quite a lot going on with Max and I thought there'd be some more positions to be gained," Hadjar told the broadcaster after climbing from the wreckage. "Then Max just came back, spun around right in front of me. I had to jump on the brake right on the exit of turn two and then I lost like five or six positions after that."
That was the costly side of the story. The performance side was more encouraging for Red Bull. The team brought a meaningful upgrade to Miami — chassis tweaks, a new floor, a revised front-wing flap — and the car finally looked competitive again after three weekends in the midfield mire.
Verstappen used that pace to carve back through the order, picking off Carlos Sainz, attacking George Russell, and engaging in a long-running scrap with Charles Leclerc as the Ferrari recovered from his own first-lap spin. Sainz, on team radio, accused Verstappen of taking liberties "because he's driving in the midfield." Pundits in the post-race show shrugged.
"He never has been [careful], he never will be," James Allison observed during the F1 post-race show. "That's just how Max races. He drives like that against the front of the field too."
Verstappen himself blamed his own opening-lap mistake for the difficult afternoon that followed. "If the car was in one piece, I felt that car was pretty good on the laps to the grid," the Dutchman said. "I felt like we would have been more competitive. I really felt optimistic for today. But yeah, I got held up at the beginning when I spun and was in the wrong position for that. And then the damage that I got after that — then I was just, I had nothing."
Fifth place was the eventual prize, on the line, just before Leclerc closed the door. For a driver who has spent much of 2026 looking quietly resigned, Verstappen looked unmistakably alive in Miami — combative, fractionally over the limit, and self-aware enough to take the blame for the early spin. Red Bull, with the upgrades clearly working, will travel to Canada with the most encouraging weekend of the season behind them.
