Norris victorious as conditions eliminate 6 contenders

Lando Norris has confirmed that McLaren have kicked off the season with the best car and has thereby won the Australian Grand Prix despite tricky weather conditions. Max Verstappen was a close second while George Russell completed the podium for Mercedes.

The weather gods were present to set off the 2025 Formula One season in style as a wet track greeted the contenders, setting them up to start the Grand Prix on intermediate tyres. That posed an interesting combination of factors as they had not been any wet running so far this weekend, many rookies on the grid had never run a Grand Prix, and all drivers were shod with Pirelli's new intermediate tyre on which nobody had experience.

Sure enough this cocktail immediately provided for a surprise as in the second corner of the warm-up lap, Racing Bulls' Hadjar lost control of his car and ended up rearwards in the barrier. The young Frenchman was visibly distressed by his mistake and as he stood alongside the track the rest of the field got ready for a second attempt to start after the first one obviously got aborted due to this incident.

Meanwhile, Lawson and Bearman hadn't moved an inch as they were bound to start from the grid so didn't join the warm-up lap.

15 minutes later the next warm-up lap went fine and the actual race got underway without incidents. As Norris powered away and Piastri took second, Verstapppen quickly punched back and moved up into second place past the home hero.

Russell held fourth, then Leclerc, Tsunoda, Albon, Hamilton, Gasly, Sainz, Alonso and Stroll.

The party didn't last long though as Doohan was the next rookie to find himself losing grip at the rear and quickly spin off, leading to an early retirement for the Alpine driver and the safety car being brought out. Half a lap into this situation, Sainz also suddenly lost the rear of his Williams in the final corner and had to retire from his first race with his new team.

During lap 7 the end of the safety car is annnounced while at the same time Leclerc was told there was no significant rain in the coming 30 minutes.

Lap 8 saw a proper continuation of the race with the top 10 very close together albeit without overtakes. Behind Alonso, Stroll had seemingly lost touch and was already 3 seconds behind at the restart.

As soon as lap 11 Norris and others alraedy started looking for wet patches to cool the intermediate tyres as the racing line seemed to dry up, especially in the third sector.

By lap 13 the top three bunched up with Piastri setting the fastest lap. Russell quickly fell behind and was at least a second a lap slower that the leading trio.

Antonelli then became the first to make a pass on track since Verstappen's first lap overtake by overtaking Hulkenberg for 12th place. The Mercedes driver quickly pulled away but got a bit overeager and caught a while line at Turn 5, sending him into a spin without harm, apart from losing the place again to Hulkenberg. Antonelli bounced back and re-passed Hulkenberg later in lap 23.

In front, Verstappen lost second place to Piastri as the Dutchman made a mistake and braked too late in Turn 10, only just managing to avoid the gravel trap. The Red Bull driver continued on in third. Verstappen's Red Bull teammate Lawson on the other hand moved up a spot by passing Ocon's Haas for 16th place.

Contrary to what the rookie Mercedes driver could do, even passing Stroll on lap 25, Hamilton seemed stuck behind Albon and similarly Alonso could not find a way past Gasly. The state of the intermediate tyres was of course a factor as well as some mild rain since lap 20.

Up in front the McLaren duo remained closely matched, all the time with less than 2 seconds behind them. Verstappen was unable to keep up and was a full pit straight behind by lap 26 but still enjoying a big advantage over Russell. Leclerc continued in 5th inside his own swimming pool as his drink was leaking onto him.

Both Ferraris notably informed their race engineers to talk less with Hamilton especially repeating "please leave me to it", and "I know". Perhaps the Ferrari engineer needs to have a chat with Pete Bonnington, Hamilton's long time race engineer at Mercedes.

On lap 31, after coming ever closer to Norris, Piastri was told to "hold position until we change tyres". Clearly McLaren want to take this 1-2 rather than any unnecessary risks. Then, after the Australian made a slight mistake and lost a second to his teammate he is told he is free to race. Curious how this timing works.

On lap 34 then Alonso finds himself struck as he made race mistake and spun off into the wall. Exactly where Piastri a lap earlier picked up some gravel as well, Alonso saw his car reverse on him and slowly reducing speed until coming to a fairly mild stop in the barriers which, unfortunately for the Spaniard got his rear wing broken, prematurely ending his race and handing Antonelli 10th place.

The safety car that was brought out immediately saw everyone dive into the pits. Both McLaren drivers took on the hard tyres, Verstappen took medium. The Mercedes and Ferrari drivers went for hards.

As the racing line by now was virtually dry, the safety car left the track at the end of lap 41, leaving 16 racing laps with a threat of a short burst of heavy rain expected in a few minutes.

As things got going clearly Norris wanted to build as much of a gap as possible before this rain arrived, uneager to have Verstappen close to him in a treacherously wet situation. After two laps, Norris alredy had 2.5 seconds on Piastri and 3.5 to Verstapppen.

In the midfield Tsunoda was clearly holding up Leclerc, Albon and Hamilton.

Moments later both McLarens were off in the gravel. Norris returned and maintained the lead but then immediately went for the pitlane to change to intermediates. Verstappen and everybody else stayed out. Piastri got stuck on the slippery grass but eventually made his way back on track, then also switching to intermediate tyres.

Verstappen was told to stay out repeatedly but at the end of lap 46 pitted, sliding into the barrier of the pitlane and switching to intermediates.

With the track now again completely wet, Hamilton and Leclerc were left out on hard tyres while most had switched to inters. Lawson then spun off at Turn 2, bring out yet another safety car. This enabled the Ferrari duo to switch after losing lots and lots of time in that last lap. Hamilton notably got ahead of Leclerc as the latter spun while trying one of his overtakes on Tsunoda.

Bortoleto also got eliminated as he had spun elsewhere roundabout the time that Lawson made his own retirement.

This made for Norris leading the race behind the SC, followed by Verstappen, Russell, Albon, Antonelli, Stroll, Hulkenberg, Gasly, Hamilton, Leclerc, Tsunoda, Ocon, Piastri and Bearman. 6 cars were out of the race.

With everyone on intermediates on a track similar in condition to what we had at the start, the race got going again with 6 more laps. Norris got away well. Only Leclerc managed to make up a position in this restart by passing Hamilton through Turn 1 as the latter was somewhat stuck. One lap later the two of them get past Gasly as he went wide at Turn 1.

One lap later Piastri also passed Gasly to take 10th place.

Up in front, Norris' early advantage had disappeared and Verstappen was right on the rear of the McLaren, enjoying the benefit of DRS to come closer on the 3 DRS zones that we have on this track.

As Antonelli cleared Albon to take 4th place but then got hit with a 5s penalty for unsafe release, Norris kept his cool and won the Australian Grand Prix.