Max Verstappen scored his third win of 2022 in the first ever Miami GP.

After struggling with car temperature related issues on Friday, even missing out on a lot of practise time during FP2, the reigning champion had qualified in P3 due to a first sector mistake in his final pole attempt.

At the race start, Verstappen immediately overtook Sainz, then had to wait until Lap 9 to complete the move for the lead on Leclerc at the first corner, keeping the first spot comfortably for the remaining 46 laps.

Miami Race Win ✅ Fastest Lap ✅ #DriveroftheDay ✅ @Max33Verstappen pic.twitter.com/iTc7FDbMeU

— Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) May 8, 2022

The Red Bull driver was extremely satisfied after his dominating performance in the inaugural Miami round, as he said in the post race interview:

"It was an incredible GP, very physical as well, but I think we have kept it exciting until the end."

"I'm incredibly happy with winning here in Miami. It was an incredible Sunday for us."

He expanded on his performance in the race later in an interview to Sky Uk, especially on the great start he had in spite of him not being able to practise it in earlier session. 

"It was very good, especially the start. I mean, I hadn't done a start at all this weekend because of all the troubles, so I didn't know what to expect."

"I saw the opportunity to go round the outside and it worked really well, I guess. We also gave each other space luckily.

The moment for the second Ferrari pass of the day came a bit later, as he went on to explain:

"Then I was trying to hunt down Charles, I saw at one point that he was struggling a bit with his right front tyre, and I went for it, so I could pass him."

"Actually, that really made the race, because I could open up my gap, which then on the hards, they were very similar, like one lap he was a bit faster, then I was faster again."

Just when he had built a comfortable gap of over 7 seconds, the safety car was brought out due to an incident between Norris and Gasly, cancelling all of his hard work.

"So, I was not very happy when the safety car came out but you know, these things happen when you're in the front, some of those helped me in the last so we can't complain."

"In the restart we went for it again, initially I was struggling a little bit because of the cold tyres, I just didn't have the grip, but as soon as they came into temperature I think I could pull away a little bit."

However, reliability keeps to be an issue for the Milton Keynes based team.

This time, after Verstappen's forced retirements in Bahrain and Australia, it was his teammate Sergio Perez who suffered from a loss of power mid race, even if the Mexican driver managed to complete the race, ending in P4: "We really have to be on top of that."

The Dutchman also said that the team understood the reason behind such cuts, but that they still have to work on it:

"We have to of course try and make sure that these things don't happen, but we're of course working on leaving them out," he concluded.