Leclerc: I pushed a bit too much, I lost the rear

In terms of pace, however, it was still the same story for Charles Leclerc and Ferrari, devastatingly fast in qualifying, only to go back down the order in race conditions. That was the case in Miami back in 2022 for the Monegasque who started from pole, only to finish second behind Verstappen.

"The feeling in the car is good on one-lap runs. In terms of race pace, we are still lacking compared to our competitors and are focused on closing that gap. Let’s see what is possible tomorrow," Leclerc said in Ferrari's post practice brief.

Leclerc was third fastest in FP1, and remained there in FP2, where he was almost half a second off the pace of Max Verstappen, but ended up in the barriers at Turn 8 damaging his front right suspension beyond repair.

Reflecting on crash, he told Formula 1 Official Website: "Yeah overall it’s very tricky because there’s only one line and whenever you get off line there’s really, really poor grip and that’s basically what happened.

"I pushed a bit too much, I lost the rear, tried to recover from it, but I had no grip to turn the car, so that was it," the Ferrari ace explained.

"No big damage – obviously the front-right is gone but apart from that no damage to the rear of the car which is the most important, so yeah, tomorrow is another day so I’m sure it will go well," he revealed.

As for his chances against the Red Bulls; Leclerc said: "Red Bull is again in a league of its own, they are very, very far in front, and yeah in the race we definitely have a lot of time to find."

Carlos Sainz seemed to be in a better place in Miami compared to Baku where he was at some point eight tenths off the pace of his teammate who took pole in both the Sprint Shootout and Qualifying. The Spaniard was second in both practice sessions on Friday.

He said: "Today in Miami was, as expected, an intense Friday with high temperatures and a lot of running. The tarmac is very different to last year so it was important to get a good feeling for the new conditions.

"We completed the whole programme, we tried all three compounds and we’ve got plenty of data for tonight," Sainz concluded.