The McLaren team fulfilled its favorite role and conquered pole position in Australia at the start of the season of Formula 1 2025. Lando Norris drove a best time of 1: 15.096 minutes in the Albert Park of Melbourne and referred his team -mate Oscar Piatri to second place by 0.084 seconds.
At first it didn’t look like McLaren was dominating Saturday. Piatri was in 10th place after the first Q3 run because he was canceled the lap time due to track limits in curve 4. And Piatri was only fourth – before the two started at a furious final and outclassed the rest of the world by almost half a second.
“This is an incredible car,” said Norris on the pit radio, while CEO ZAK Brown applauded ecstatically at the command stand. Because now it is clear: Unlike in 2023 and 2024, McLaren is competitive from the start and, as is predicted by many experts, a very hot candidate for winning the World Cup.
After the first Q1 run, Max Verstappen (Red Bull) was still in the lead. But Verstappen fell back to fourth place on the third and Russell. Behind it, Yuki Tsunoda (Racing Bulls) sensationally secured fifth place. The Japanese already had 0.574 seconds behind the pole.
Alexander Albon (Williams) caused a further surprise as the sixth and thus beat the higher-esteemed Ferrari pilots Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. Leclerc was the faster man within the team. Ninth became Pierre Gasly (Alpine), tenth Carlos Sainz in the second Williams.
No time for Bearman: what was going on in Q1?
Oliver Bearman remains the unlucky bird of the season start. After his crash in the first and departure in the third free training session, he had to stop qualifying after an installation lap. A gear problem occurred on the Haas, so that the 19-year-old could not set a single spread.
“Now it can only go up,” sighs Bearman. “I don’t let myself be pulled down by two bad days in a very long season. I think we have more difficulties as a team than we expected – more than it appeared in Bahrain. So we have a lot of work ahead of us when it comes to the pure performance of the car.”
Pech also had Liam Lawson: The New Zealander, successor to Sergio Perez at Red Bull, did not drive in the third training session due to a turbodefect and therefore had to go to qualifying “blindly” because he could no longer test the set-up changes after Friday.
And then you also noticed: Lawson made some careless mistakes, including the exit curve 10 on his last fast round in Q1. When it was already clear that it would not be enough, he also drove into the meadow in the last sector. At the end of the team, over a second behind teammates.
“The last round was actually good – until the last sector, where I then had a massive loss of time,” says Lawson. “Of course, I don’t help that I missed the third training session. But something like that in qualifying simply doesn’t happen to me. Until before curve 9 we were about half a second. So we would have improved further. But through curve 9 and 10 I already had a slip – I think the tires have already left it.”
The most prominent victim in Q1 was Andrea Kimi Antonelli. The Mercedes driver initially went on the track with medium tires, but quickly noticed that it was the wrong choice. On soft pirellis, he set a time of 1: 16,525 minutes, half a second behind teammate Russell – and was replaced by Bortoleto from the top 15 at the last second. Just 0.009 seconds.
“We saw damage to the underbody at Kimi’s second run,” Antonelli was protected by the Mercedes team. “This had a loss of performance for his last two rounds.” Specifically, the front end of the underbody grinded with a large spark of sparks on the asphalt. Maybe a sequence of half a ride by Antonelli in curve 6.
It also caught it in Q1, Nico Hülkenberg, who lured Gabriel Bortoleto in the other clean 0.063 seconds. Rookie Bortoleto had the upper hand in the internal duel all weekend, which is why the end result is ultimately not a surprise. “I shouldn’t be happy, but it’s me,” he sparked after Q1 – an allusion to the bad clean performance, which was good enough to beat the recognized quick qualifier Hülkenberg.
19th was Esteban Ocon (Haas). The Frenchman was the slowest driver of those who could set a time.
How did it go on in Q2?
Although Hamilton turned at the end of the session and thus provided yellow flags, there were no further surprises in Q2. Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls), Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), Lance Stroll (both Aston Martin), Jack Doohan (Alpine) and Gabriel Bortoleto (cleanly) took up positions 11 to 15.
Hamilton was clearly behind Leclerc in Q1 and Q2 and was previously only Ferraris number 2 in Melbourne with a distance of respect. Nevertheless, he ultimately made it to the top 10 final as the sixth.
Incidentally, the reason for Alonso’s departure was quickly found: the veteran from Spain once came next to the route and damaged the underbody. Bitter, because in Q1 he had also shone with absolute best times in the first and second sector.