With the season-opening Australian Grand Prix done and dusted, F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo takes a look at teams' one-lap performance from the Melbourne qualifying session.

Having lived up to the expectations from the Bahrain pre-season testing, McLaren driver Lando Norris won the Australian Grand Prix starting from pole position.

In the majority of the 57-lap race, the Briton found himself in a close fight with his team-mate Oscar Piastri for the victory, albeit a late rain shower lead to a thrilling end. The weather pretty much divided the race into three parts – the first in the wet, the second in the dry and then the final part once more in the wet.

Up until half-distance it looked like McLaren were heading for a dominant one-two finish, but then at one point it seemed the win might escape them, but they still got both drivers home in the points.

Norris took the fifth win of his career and number 190 for the team run by Zak Brown and Andrea Stella, it’s twelfth victory in Australia. Norris could also take pride in taking the second hat-trick of his career, clinching the win, pole position and the fastest race lap.

Reigning world champion Max Verstappen finished second, just 0.895s behind Norris, with Mercedes driver George Russell securing third place, some 8.481s behind.

Although the Melbourne round is hardly a reference point for the rest of the season given the weather conditions that dominated the 57-lap race, the fact that McLaren appeared to be a step ahead of everyone in every condition confirms the sentiments from the pre-season testing.

Pure pace in qualifying

As for the qualifying, cars generally became much quicker than in the previous season. With the weather conditions having been constantly warm and consistent all through the qualifying session, the season's first time-attack session delivered a first picture of the pecking order.

While the qualifying session of last season's Melbourne race saw Max Verstappen narrowly beat the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, the pecking order has completely changed for 2025.

Among the top teams, McLaren improved the most, having been 1.219s quicker than what they managed a year ago. Mercedes achieved a similar improvement, with Russell posting a time that was 1.178s faster than his benchmark from 2024.

By contrast, Red Bull and Ferrari were only 0.434s and 0.430s quicker respectively. The huge difference came not fully unexpected as while Red Bull and Ferrari enjoyed a sizeable performance advantage of last season, Mercedes and McLaren made up ground in the second half of the season in 2024, but part of that deficit is still down to McLaren's and Mercedes' improvements over the winter.

Alpine improved the most, with Pierre Gasly posting a time that was a whopping 1.6s quicker than what the Anglo-French outfit achieved last year. Williams also found an eye-catching step compared to last year with a pace improvement of 1.4s.

Sauber had a difficult pre-season testing, but the Mattia Binotto-led outfit displayed a relatively strong performance in the first qualifying session of the year, improving 0.8s on their benchmark from 2024.

Aston Martin struggled for pace in pre-season testing, and they found only four tenths of a second on their one-lap pace from the previous season. Haas achieved the smallest improvement in Melbourne with a step of just under three tenths of a second.