During the sprint race, Hamilton and Magnussen had some tense moments while battling for eighth place.
Magnussen received a penalty for cutting a corner at one point, and later they bumped into each other, then both went off the track during their fight.
Even though Magnussen’s actions slowed down Hamilton’s progress, Hamilton didn’t think Magnussen did anything wrong. In fact, he appreciated that Magnussen admitted to making things tough.
“I mean, it’s really honest of him. I think it’s pretty cool,” Hamilton said in an interview with Sky. “We had a good race. It was a little bit on the edge in some places, but that is what I love. I love racing hard.”
Hamilton finished eighth in the race, but he lost his points because he got a penalty for driving too fast in the pitlane when there was a safety car.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff thought that the Mercedes cars didn’t perform well at the Miami track, especially in terms of speed.
“I think that penalty for the pitlane speeding, these things can happen, these errors,” Wolff said. “And in that respect, I think the pace of the car was not too bad today. To the limited amount we were able to see there, set-up-wise it’s clear we need to change direction for quali.”
The lack of speed was also a problem for George Russell. He had a tough time after getting caught up in a crash at Turn 1, which pushed him down the order, and then he couldn’t make up ground in the race because of the DRS train.
“I think that race was just incredibly boring for everybody,” Russell said. “It was just a DRS train. In F1, you can’t overtake if you don’t have DRS and, when all the cars have got DRS, you just can’t overtake.”
Russell added, “I lost five or six positions to the cars behind. I’m sure it will be a different story tomorrow when things spread out, but it was a pretty boring race.”
