“Hold your nerve.”
Well, it’s the one you’ve all been waiting for. Loving it, and hating it, Formula 1 is back for the 2025 season, and it just feels right that we’re back at Albert Park in Melbourne for the season opener, the Australian Grand Prix. And for the first time in 20 years, we had a wet Aussie opener, with McLaren snatching victory from the jaws of defeat (again), Max Verstappen refusing to relinquish being the main character, and tactical chaos behind. Let’s break it down.
Papaya “Rules”
Qualifying was an alarming sign for the competitive balance of the field. The general talk coming out of testing was that McLaren had two-tenths on the field, and it showed in Q3 when Piastri and Norris both dunked three-tenths on Verstappen’s head in their final runs to lock out the front row.
The battle at the front defined this race, with the promise of a wet race. F3 was heavily hampered by heavy rain, and F2’s feature race was cancelled altogether. Verstappen overtook Piastri early doors via a classic up-and-under on Turn 2, but he cooked his front tyres trying to stay with Lando. It would goose the first half of his race, falling 15 seconds behind the McLarens by half-distance after a mistake ran him wide at Turn 11.
Oscar Piastri looked like the fastest man on track and was hassling Norris for the lead… only to be told to hold position due to backmarkers on track, waiting for the track to be dry enough for slicks. It seemingly threw the Aussie off his rhythm, dropping to over a second behind and then tapping the gravel at Turn 6, losing a couple more seconds. He’d never have it that good again.
Fernando Alonso crashing at what I’m now calling the Turn 6 of Poor Judgement (Alex Albon edition), I thought was going to kill a lot of the fun out of the race because the crossover point was taken care of for the field. But a late Class 3 rain pocket with just 10 laps to go led to utter chaos, as Norris nearly lost it entering a wet part of the track, and Piastri slid off twice in Sector 3, the second time round, beaching his car in the grass. David Coulthard eat your heart out. Piastri came back to finish 9th in the end, but it’s another frustrating weekend where the Aussie is right there but ultimately falls short.
Verstappen tried to stay out and beat the rain on slicks but it was too heavy to survive, changing for Inters, leading Norris to shuffle back to the front via another Safety Car for Liam Lawson and Gabriel Bortoleto both spinning into the walls. Props to Norris, he held off Verstappen right at the end to take the win. While I’m not fully convinced Norris was the quicker man in Papaya today, he clutched up when it mattered most, something we all criticised him for in 2024. Six months ago, I don’t think he wins this race. If he has more days like that, with the car he’s in, he has every chance at the World Championship.
But again, I do have to ask sincerely – Does McLaren actually trust their drivers? Zak Brown is adamant he has the best driver pairing in the sport. I think there’s a valid case you can make for that. Piastri was just rewarded with a £20m a year multi-year extension through 2027, and in Round 1 you’re telling him to not race his teammate? At best, it’s ultra-conservative. At worst, it’s blatant team orders and yet more flimsy throwing around of the “Papaya Rules” terms, which at this point has about as much believability as a Labour politician.
In any case, we shouldn’t be having discussions about McLaren and team orders in Round 1. If you’re going to have two elite drivers in your team, you’re going to have to accept it’s nigh-on impossible to please them both at the same time. And if McLaren makes this a one-car Championship, this will keep coming up.
The Rookie Report
So after all the talk about F1’s stacked Rookie 2025 field, let’s score all of the rookies after their opening round:
Andrea Kimi Antonelli: Was poor in qualifying, getting eliminated off the back of damaging his own floor via judgement at Turn 6, and was unfortunate to replicate teammate George Russell by dropping a wheel at Turn 4 during the race, but held his nerve at the end and kept his nose dry for a stunning P5. It would have been fourth if it weren’t for his team unsafely releasing him in the final round of stops. 8/10
EDIT: P4, actually – Mercedes had a right to review accepted over Antonelli’s unsafe release in the pits, the roll-hoop camera wasn’t avaliable until after the race was over. Good for them.
Liam Lawson: A miserable debut. Seemingly over-driving the car right from the start, being eliminated in Q1 by what he called “stupid” driving, and then struggling in race trim before spinning into the wall via slicks on a wet track. Not an ideal start for the man backed to support Verstappen. 2/10
Gabriel Bortoleto: Did well to make Q2 on debut ahead of his teammate and had a decent race pace before spinning into the wall when the rain came down again. Unfortunate, but some promise was shown. 4/10
Jack Doohan: Was decent in qualifying, keeping pace with Pierre Gasly but losing a lap due to track limits in Q2 put him under pressure, only to be denied a final attempt due to Hamilton’s spin. His race lasted 30 seconds after a Turn 5 spin into the wall ended his day. Not a good start for the man under immense pressure. 3/10
Ollie Bearman: A nightmare full debut. Crashing in FP1 lost him FP2. Another spin into the gravel in FP3, taking him out of Qualifying. Haas are not at the races, but Bearman’s troubles were largely of his own making. 2/10
Isack Hadjar: Best of the rookies in Qualifying with a solid P11 and just missing out on Q3 by less than a tenth, but an embarrassing spin at Turn 1 on the formation lap ended his day. Gutwrenching after such a promising start. 2/10
I’d have included Fernando Alonso in here too, but I feel like that joke would be too easy. But not exactly an excellent showcase for what was a rookie crop that’s garnered a lot of excitement. Hopefully, more to come at a more conventional weekend in the future.
The Extended Lightning Round
A salute to Anthony Hamilton. The images of him consoling Isack Hadjar, who looks at his son as a hero, were incredibly heartwarming. A rare dose of humanity and fatherhood in a sport that so often lacks it when discussed in circles “on here”.
I warned you all last winter that the first Ferrari honse-ing for Hamilton was going to hit like crack, and well… it did. Setup changes led to both of them on the fourth row in qualifying, Leclerc made some ground, but staying out at the end slipped them down the field and barely kept them in the points. And look, I know it’s his first race, and the teething problems over the radio were obvious for the world to hear, but Hamilton got passed around the outside, in the wet, twice down the stretch. Yikes.
Again, make no mistake – Max Verstappen is the best in the world, and once again he made life difficult for McLaren when he had no business doing so on paper. Red Bull’s worst fears look true, that they’re a clear second at best right now, but making life difficult for the Papaya could be invaluable until we get to Spain and the flexi-wing adjustment race.
And you gotta love the winners when a chaos race breaks out – Alex Albon was sensational to finish 4th and silence some of the doubts over the Sainz hire, the latter spinning into the wall while under the first Safety Car (I suspect a mechanical, but we’ll see). Williams’ best non-Spa 21’ result since Lance Stroll at the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Speaking of Stroll, excellent job keeping his head down for sixth and his best result for a couple of years, and Nico Hulkenberg was seventh on his Sauber return and top Ferrari. My man.
Honourable mention to Yuki Tsunoda, who had his best weekend in F1, qualifying 5th and potentially looking good for a podium, only for the tyre change to bone him and drop him out of the points. Brutal, the man can never catch a break when the rain falls.
Also, Haas. Again, it’s early days, but we buried Guenther Steiner when he built up a lot of goodwill and compassion only for the team to sink back into the abyss, and they looked awful in Australia. Hope it was just an outlier, but Komatsu’s going to have some shit to answer for if Haas go from borderline 6th to 10th in one off-season.
And finally, just when I thought the PR push for the F1 movie couldn’t get any worse – The latest trailer confirms that the movie also features a romance angle between Brad Pitt’s character Sonny Hayes, and his female engineer. I was genuinely in shock. It’s bad enough the movie is the vanity project of an alleged domestic violence abuser, and bad that the one moral compass F1 has in Lewis Hamilton is executive producer by association. Still, the push for women in Motorsport gets pushed back a good decade by that being featured front and centre in a movie about the sport, barely a year out from its bleakest modern scandal – Christian Horner’s alleged abuse of power with a woman from within his team.
I cannot believe F1 signed off on this. I get it, a romance arc is a blatant dangling of the keys to Hollywood as a hook for the movie. It’s a classic Motorsport trope, win the race, get the girl as a prize to be won. But that’s a dated relic of the sport’s past and we’re in 2025. Everything about “F1” is grim. If you have any sense of moral fibre in you, please, don’t support this movie.
It took me 1,700 words to mention George Russell finished third. So here you go.
The Rating: 8/10 (Great) – A 6/10 race, with a 10/10 finish, a classic Motorsport101 staple around here. The first half of this race wasn’t anything too special, tense but nothing more, but it exploded late on with the second batch of rain, the tactics involved, and the late drama of Verstappen vs Norris for the win while the field adjusted itself. Can never complain when you get a good chaos race to start the year. See you in China.
