Australian Grand Prix Melbourne 2025 LIVE updates

The Albert Park gates have officially opened on race day – and some cross country skills would have gotten you a long way.

Hundreds of fans were waiting to enter from the early hours of this morning, and could be seen quite literally sprinting once they had their tickets scanned.

They’re all hoping to get a good view of Melbourne Walk – where the drivers and team leaders pass as they make their way to the paddock. And it’s quite the event, complete with a DJ and energetic presenters.

Your faithful F1 fan correspondent is posted up near the barricades to see what all the hype is about. Look out for updates from here the throughout the morning.

The biggest battle to watch this Formula 1 season won’t be McLaren versus Red Bull, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri versus Max Verstappen, or Mercedes versus Ferrari – it’ll be McLaren versus McLaren.

While there are closely guarded secrets right up and down pit lane when it comes to everything from race strategy to tyre performance, to engine and aerodynamic development, McLaren team boss Zak Brown has long been an open book on where Melbourne superstar Piastri and his British teammate Norris sit – on level terms.

F1 teams typically have a lead, or “No.1” driver, who has a clear pace advantage and is then given the rub of the green when it comes to race-day strategy and preferential treatment. But that’s a non-factor at McLaren – at least until it reaches the point of the season where either Norris or Piastri is out of realistic contention for the drivers’ title.

That’s what we saw last year, with Piastri eventually playing Robin to Norris’ Batman as the Englishman tried to hunt down Verstappen for the crown.

But with a new season comes a fresh title race and Piastri and Norris are rivals almost as much as they are teammates. After all, they do have two championships to try and win – the constructors’ and the drivers’ – so they can’t race to the detriment of their team.

Brown explained the situation to Motorsport.com last year.

“Make no mistake about it – they both want to be No.1s and they are both No.1s. We just don’t have any No.2s,” he said of Norris and Piastri, who finished second and fourth in last year’s title race and both won top-flight races for the first time.

“But they race for the team. They’re the types of individuals [who] I think can race each other hard and be number one in their own mind and respect the fact that we run two number one cars. And we always have and always will.

“Obviously, if you get later into the championship and one driver has more of a shot than another, then you might start looking at things that you do strategically differently.”

Game. On.