Written by Peter Johnson, edited by Rohan Brown
Formula One returned with a bang at the Australian Grand Prix, but who made a flying start to the new season - and who didn’t?
Winner - Lando Norris
Let’s start with the obvious one. Lando Norris ended Max Verstappen’s record 1029-day hold on first in the drivers’ standings with a dominant victory Down Under, himself taking the World Championship lead for the first time in his career.
Norris snatched pole from his home hero teammate Oscar Piastri on Saturday before the papaya pair waltzed off into the distance on Sunday afternoon in what could be a sign of things to come this season. Despite the occasional scare, including having his mirrors full of Verstappen for the final two laps and an off at Turn 12 when the rain began to fall, Norris had the race under control pretty much from start to finish.
Norris did admit that the McLaren appears to be the fastest car, although downplayed the relative speed of the MCL39 compared to its challengers. Speaking after qualifying, he said: “Too many questions in the media are just about the car. Me and Oscar drove very, very well yesterday. I’m not saying others didn’t. But others shouldn’t have been as far off as what they were. That was clear.
“I think we do, by a little margin, have the best car, but not everything is about the car.”
Indeed, whether Sunday’s victory can be attributed to the car, the driver, or both, the early signs are that Norris will take some beating this season.
Winner - Yuki Tsunoda
2025 is without question the most important season of Yuki Tsunoda’s career to date, as his options for a seat in 2026 are already beginning to look limited.
Tsunoda was understandably disappointed to be pipped to the second Red Bull seat by rookie Liam Lawson and his best chance of a drive for next year may well be to prove that he deserves a promotion at the Kiwi’s expense.
Tsunoda will come away from Albert Park content that he gave a very strong account of himself this weekend, despite not coming away with the points his performance merited. He qualified an excellent fifth and ran a comfortable sixth for most of the race after being passed by Charles Leclerc.
The rain began to fall in the closing stages of the race, however, and an incorrect strategy call from his Racing Bulls team dropped him outside of the points, leaving him empty-handed by the chequered flag.
His performance over the course of the weekend definitely merited more than a P12 finish and he certainly made a statement over Lawson, who failed to make the chequered flag after a shunt on Lap 47.
The RB driver may have won the battle, but with 23 races to go, he remains a long way from winning the war.
Winner - Andrea Kimi Antonelli
Mercedes protégé Andrea Kimi Antonelli was another shock exit in Q1 on Saturday as he began the unenviable task of replacing seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton.
However, this was ultimately a minor blot on an otherwise phenomenal debut weekend for the young Italian, who was light years ahead of the other rookies in the field on race day.
There was clear pace in the Mercedes throughout the weekend, as demonstrated by George Russell - more on that later - and Antonelli could have been much higher on the starting grid had it not been for floor damage on Saturday.
His lowly grid slot did, however, provide him the opportunity to slice through the field on Sunday and a stunning move on Williams’ Alex Albon, who had previously kept the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton at bay all afternoon, was a standout moment of a superb race.
Despite some post-race penalty shenanigans, Antonelli eventually was classified in P4, which was absolutely nothing less than his performance merited.
A word must also go out to Antonelli’s race engineer Peter “Bono” Bonnington, who after 12 years in the ear of Lewis Hamilton adapted seamlessly to working with his new driver.
Winner - Sauber
Expectations are understandably low for Sauber this year. The Swiss outfit’s neon-green cars were virtually invisible throughout last season, dropping off the back of the pack at most races and achieving just one points finish courtesy of the now-departed Zhou Guanyu.
With next year’s high-profile transformation into Audi also on the horizon, 2025 is expected to be treated mainly as a season of transition for the team.
However, Nico Hüulkenberg’s scarcely-believable seventh-place finish Down Under means Sauber have already scored more points than they accumulated in the whole of 2024. The German’s Q1 elimination demonstrates that the Sauber probably still lacks raw pace, but the car is in very capable hands and could well appear in the top 10 more regularly under his guidance.
Meanwhile, reigning Formula 2 champion Gabriel Borteleto, with criticism for Helmut Marko ringing in his ears, took to the track with a point to prove this weekend and turned several heads with an impressive Saturday that saw him outqualify teammate Hüulkenberg and fellow rookies Lawson, Antonelli and Bearman.
While the young Brazilian’s race met an impromptu end on Lap 46, he acquitted himself very well overall and he will certainly feel more positive after this weekend than he did going into it.
Winner - Australian fans
More than 400,000 supporters packed into the grandstands to watch the 2025 curtain-raiser and while Sunday was a miserable day to be standing outside, it made for fabulous entertainment on the racetrack.
Since the disappointment of 2020, when the F1 circus arrived in Melbourne only for the race to be cancelled due to Covid, the Australian fans have been treated to some sensational races. The track layouts modifications first introduced in 2022 have really improved the spectacle and rain-affected races seem to have become the norm.
It is rare for Australian viewers of F1 to be able to watch a race at a “normal” time, but even if they sleep through their alarms for the rest of the season as the Grands Prix take place at more unfavourable times, at least they were treated to a show in Melbourne.
Loser - Oliver Bearman
One could argue that Oliver Bearman had slightly less pressure on his shoulders this weekend than some of the other rookies, due to his performances throughout 2024 as a reserve driver for Ferrari and Haas.
However, Bearman will not want to endure too many more weekends like this as he embarks on his full-time Formula One career. He managed just 13 laps across the three Free Practice sessions, crashing in FP1, missing FP2 entirely and beaching his car in the gravel in the early stages of FP3. He then failed to set a lap time in Qualifying and found himself right at the back of the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix.
In fairness, Bearman was one of just two rookie drivers to see the chequered flag on race day and he kept his Haas pointing in the right direction while many other drivers, some of whom were far more experienced than him, ended up in the wall. He was, however, the final classified finisher and was not particularly close to teammate Esteban Ocon.
Loser - Liam Lawson
Even without comparing his performance over the weekend to that of Tsunoda, Liam Lawson’s Red Bull debut did not go to plan.
Lawson has a relatively low bar to clear in order to be considered an improvement over previous incumbent Sergio Perez and there is no expectation either for him to be particularly close to World Champion teammate Max Verstappen.
However, the young Kiwi failed to clear the benchmark on either Saturday or Sunday. A surprise elimination in the first part of Qualifying preceded a difficult race day, which culminated in a terminal accident on Lap 47.
Lawson was the only driver in the field not to have raced previously on the streets of Albert Park and will undoubtedly have easier weekends ahead of him, but the attention that comes with being Red Bull’s second driver has proved too much for his predecessors and he could really do with some solid weekends to alleviate some pressure.
Loser - Ferrari
Unlike Bono and Antonelli, the driver-engineer dynamic at Ferrari was fraught with tension throughout Sunday afternoon. Leclerc’s “water” exchange with engineer Bryan Bozzi will go down in Ferrari legend, while Lewis Hamilton seemed to spend his first race with the Scuderia telling Riccardo Adami to be quiet.
The Formula One statisticians will tell you that eventual Constructors’ champions McLaren qualified seventh and eighth at the first race of 2024, which may yet be a good omen for Ferrari. However, it won’t matter where they qualify if they don’t learn quickly from the plethora of issues they suffered in Australia.
Leclerc and Hamilton failed to unlock the true potential of the car all weekend, although Hamilton remained confident after the race that there is more pace in his new motor than we saw in Albert Park.
Arguably more concerning was the return of the old Ferrari strategy circus. While Hamilton did briefly lead the race, albeit for one lap behind the safety car, Ferrari’s gamble to delay switching to the intermediate tyres proved definitively to be the wrong decision. The team spent most of the race running fifth and eighth, which, while unspectacular, would have been a solid enough result.
However, Leclerc and Hamilton eventually crossed the line in eighth and tenth respectively, leaving the Scuderia sitting seventh in the championship and with plenty of thinking to do.
Loser - Isack Hadjar
If there is one driver whose confidence took an absolute battering in Australia, it is Isack Hadjar. The French rookie is the latest to be given an opportunity in Red Bull’s junior team, notorious for its sink-or-swim environment.
The 20-year-old was the best-performing rookie on Saturday, qualifying 11th and narrowly missing out on Q3 at his first attempt.
However, he would not even start the race on Sunday as an unfortunate spin on the formation lap put his car in the barriers. An understandably inconsolable Hadjar was greeted by Lewis Hamilton’s father Anthony in the paddock, who offered him a comforting arm and some words of wisdom.
A far less sympathetic Helmut Marko, however, told Austrian television that Hadjar’’s behaviour was “embarrassing”.
It is clear that last year’s runner-up in Formula 2 is incredibly talented behind the wheel of a racing car, and one can only hope that his experience in Albert Park does not knock him back.
Loser - Safety in Formula One
It can be a logistical nightmare to clear away damaged or stricken cars at street circuits due to the lack of space for cranes and other such equipment around the track. This does not make it any more acceptable, however, to have trucks on the circuit while cars are circulating.
Pierre Gasly was famously shaken when he encountered a tractor on track at Suzuka in 2022, an incident which evoked memories of Jules Bianchi’s fatal accident in 2014. The uproar that followed Gasly’s near miss was so strong that it was unbelievable to think that such a thing could ever happen again.
Therefore, as the safety car took to the circuit on Sunday following Fernando Alonso’s Lap 32 shunt, the last thing anybody expected was to see Lando Norris taking evasive action to avoid a truck which was driving along the racing line.
Red flags have become an ever more frequent sight during Grands Prix in recent years. Just eight races between 1998 and 2010 were stopped mid-session, while 19 races have been suspended since 2020. We really should have seen another one in Melbourne.
Comentários