By Matthew Clayton
McLaren came into the opening round of the Formula 1 season in Melbourne as the team to beat after pre-season testing in Bahrain, where last year’s constructors’ world champions looked to have extended their margin over the best of the rest.
Entering qualifying at Albert Park on Saturday, the only unanswered question was by what extent. With their backs unexpectedly against the wall as the time ticked down on a qualifying hour held in unseasonably warm autumnal conditions, McLaren turned up the heat.
McLaren pair Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris were all smiles after their front-row lockout of the grid.Credit: AP
Lando Norris had his first lap of Q3 scrubbed for running off the track at turn four, while teammate and Melbourne’s own Oscar Piastri bit off more than he could chew at the penultimate corner of Albert Park’s 14-turn, 5.3-kilometre layout – leaving the favourites in 10th and fourth respectively as the final laps loomed.
From a position of pressure, Piastri briefly took provisional pole as the majority of a record Australian Grand Prix Saturday crowd of 136,347 people roared. Seconds later, Norris usurped his teammate with a lap just 0.084 seconds faster – his time of 1:15.096 demolishing the pole record at Albert Park by over eight-tenths of a second.
Reigning four-time world champion, Red Bull star Max Verstappen wrung the neck of his hitherto recalcitrant RB21 machine to finish third, 0.385 seconds behind Norris; the rest, headed by Mercedes driver George Russell nearly half a second back, were mere specks in Norris’ rearview mirror.
It was a predictable McLaren pole that wasn’t straightforward, but it was no less imposing.
“Today was a perfect way to start,” Norris beamed after his 10th career pole position.
McLaren chief Zak Brown congratulates Piastri on his front-row race start.Credit: Getty Images
“The car is extremely quick, and when you put it together it’s unbelievable. It’s just difficult to put it together.”
Tricky as that lap time may be to achieve from within the cockpit, McLaren’s margin over the rest was best illustrated by watching trackside at the fearsome chicane between turns nine and 10, where the cars approach at 330km/h with a wall just inches from the right-hand side and hurtle through two changes of direction that see drivers subjected to 5.4 G-forces laterally, the highest load they experience all season.
If there was a checklist of what an F1 driver wants their car to do, McLaren’s MCL39 ticks most boxes at Albert Park’s signature corner sequence. The front end of the car slots into the chicane without even the suggestion of a bobble, giving Norris and Piastri confidence to launch at the turn and know the car will comply to the demands of its operator.
Mid-corner, as the lateral load pinballs from right to left in less than the blink of an eye, it rotates and then stabilises, allowing the driver to square the car up out of the corner and nail the exit with surety. It’s a millisecond-long snapshot of just two corners of Albert Park’s fast and flowing layout, but it’s the most visual demonstration of why the McLaren is ahead of the pack.
With a car so assured, the last thing McLaren needs for Sunday’s 58-lap race are variables, but, as Piastri knows, the local weather can throw an unwanted banana skin into the mix, and potentially bring Verstappen into play.
With heavy rain forecast for Sunday morning – and the prospect of a race starting on a wet track and finishing in the dry for a grid yet to test their 2025 machines in the rain – McLaren’s seemingly inexorable march to the top step of the podium becomes less of a sure thing.
Norris showed nerves of steel to qualify on pole.Credit: Getty Images
Verstappen’s world championship defence last year was won by dominating the early part of the season when he had the sport’s benchmark car, and opportunistically winning races when he didn’t.
His wet-weather masterclass in Brazil last November, when he went from 17th on the grid to win by 19 seconds in a deluge that tripped up many of his rivals, will be front-of-mind for Norris and Piastri when they gingerly pull back the curtains in their respective hotel rooms on Sunday morning, hoping the forecasters have got it wrong.
“We know how quick Max and Red Bull is in the rain,” Norris acknowledged on Saturday.
“In the wet, there are always some crazy things that can happen,” Verstappen offered with a grin, nurturing any seeds of doubt his bulging career CV would already have planted.
Wet races in Melbourne are few, with 2010 and 2003 the most recent examples, and a lesson in how to thrive on a high-speed street circuit with walls waiting to bend cars at every turn – the white lines used for drivers and cyclists for the other 51 weekends of the year offering the grip of a skating rink when damp.
In 2003, McLaren’s David Coulthard saw enough after one lap to pit to discard his wet-weather tyres and vault from 11th on the grid to his second Australian Grand Prix win. Seven years later, Jenson Button – on his debut for McLaren after winning the world championship for Brawn GP the year prior – pitted for slicks at the perfect time and won in Melbourne for the second year running.
It’s likely to be an afternoon of thinking on your feet and being on the right tyre at the right time. McLaren will be hoping their history of success in chaotic circumstances in Melbourne has a third triumphant chapter.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport are sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
