Max Verstappen's 2026 Miami Grand Prix encapsulated everything Red Bull's season has been so far: flashes of pace, a costly mistake, and a driver who appears to be enjoying himself precisely because he no longer has a championship to protect.
Starting second alongside Antonelli, Verstappen launched brilliantly to lead into turn one, only to lose the rear at the exit of turn two and spin in front of the entire field. Charles Leclerc went around at almost the same moment. The bigger casualty was Verstappen's own teammate Isack Hadjar, who collected the spinning Red Bull and ended his afternoon 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 said after retiring. "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."
From that point on, Verstappen's race became a series of aggressive recovery moves on tyres that were never quite the right age. Red Bull had brought a meaningful upgrade package to Miami — chassis tweaks, a new floor, a revised front-wing flap and what looked like a stiffer rear suspension geometry — and the car finally looked like a front-running machine again after three rounds of wallowing in the midfield.
The Dutchman cleared Carlos Sainz, then attacked George Russell, then locked horns with Leclerc as the Ferrari recovered from his own first-lap spin. Sainz, fed up with the lunges, complained on team radio that Verstappen "thinks he can get away with anything because he's driving in the midfield."
Former Ferrari race engineer-turned-pundit James Allison disagreed during the post-race show: "He never has been [careful], he never will be, nor should he. That's just how Max races. He drives like that against the front of the field too."
Verstappen himself was philosophical, conceding the on-track pressure with Leclerc late in the race had cost him track position to Russell. "If the car was in one piece, I felt that car was pretty good on the laps to the grid," he 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 reward, on the line, just as Leclerc closed back up after a near-miss out of the final corner. For a driver supposedly out of the championship hunt, it was a vintage Verstappen drive — combative, fractionally over the limit, and self-aware enough to admit the early spin was on him.
With Red Bull's upgrades clearly working and Verstappen back in a car that flatters his style, the rest of the grid will note that the Dutchman is once again a problem to be managed — even when he is starting weekends already a long way down on points.
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*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/verstappen-miami-gp-2026-spin-turn-two-hadjar-midfield-brawl-p5). Visit for full coverage.*