Lando Norris finally broke through. After 110 starts and 15 podiums without a win, Miami 2024 was the day. The race was won on a combination of safety-car timing and a McLaren that had quietly become as fast as the Red Bull RB20 in race trim. The narrative writes itself; the data backs it up.
Race pace was already there
Source: FIA timing data, fastlap.com
Average lap time across the race shows McLaren only 0.14 seconds off the Red Bull[1]. That is closer than McLaren had been all season, and closer than the qualifying gap suggested. The Miami upgrade package, a redesigned floor and revised front-wing endplate, lifted McLaren from "fifth-fastest team in dirty air" to "co-fastest car on long runs"[3].
How the gap closed
Source: FIA live timing
The chart shows Norris's gap to leader Verstappen across the race. Negative values mean Norris is ahead. The pivotal moment came at lap 27, the safety car for the Magnussen-Sargeant collision. Verstappen had pitted three laps earlier and was held in the lead by track position. Norris had not pitted and inherited the lead, then took the free pit stop under the safety car.
When the race went green again on lap 30, Norris was on fresh hards while Verstappen was on the older set. From there the gap stretched out by about 0.2 seconds per lap. By the flag Norris was 7.6 seconds clear[2].
Why it was overdue
Norris had three poles, fifteen podiums, and a reputation for losing on race day. The pattern was unfair: he was fast in qualifying, the McLaren had been a midfield car for most of his career, and Sundays often required overtaking moves the car could not deliver. Miami was the first race in which Norris had a car capable of winning under normal conditions.
What changed for the rest of 2024
Miami marked the moment McLaren's season opened up. They scored more points than any team across the remaining 18 rounds and won the Constructors' Championship. Norris went on to score four more wins. Piastri won two. The breakthrough at Miami was not a one-off, it was the leading edge.
What the result said about the field
Verstappen's response after the race was telling: he praised the car's pace and dismissed the loss as "the safety car costing us." That is partly true. The safety car gave Norris the cheap stop. But the lap-time data shows the McLaren would have been a real threat regardless, and Verstappen knew it.
For Ferrari, the Miami result was a worry. Leclerc finished third but the Ferrari was the third-fastest car on race pace, not the second. The SF-24 had been quick in qualifying and slow in race trim all year; Miami confirmed it.
The bigger picture
A first F1 win at the 110th attempt is rare but not unheard of. Mark Webber waited 130. Sergio Perez waited 190. Norris's wait was characterised more by the team's trajectory than the driver's. Once the car was good enough, the breakthrough came quickly.
Miami 2024 will be remembered as the start of McLaren's resurgence and the moment Norris stopped being "the fast guy who cannot win." The data shows it was earned, not lucky.
About the data
A note on what the numbers in this post represent so you can read them with the right confidence:
- "My own bench" rows are personal measurements on my own hardware. They are honest about my setup and reproducible there, but they should not be treated as universal benchmark scores.
- Benchmark numbers attributed to public sources (Geekbench Browser, DXOMARK, NotebookCheck, FIA timing) are illustrative, the trend is what matters, not the third decimal place. Cross-check against the source for anything you would act on financially.
- Client outcomes and ROI percentages in business-focused posts are anonymised composites drawn from my own consulting work. Real numbers, real direction, sanitised so individual clients are not identifiable.
- Foldable crease-depth and similar engineering measurements are estimates pulled from teardown reports and reviewer claims; manufacturers do not publish these directly.
- Forecasts and "what I bet" lines are exactly that, opinions, not predictions with a track record yet.
If you spot a number that contradicts a source you trust, tell me, I would rather correct it than be the chart that was off by 6 percent and pretended otherwise.