The Saturday in F1 Australian GP saw McLaren take charge as Ferrari faltered allowing the likes of Yuki Tsunoda and Alexander Albon to flourish.
It was a much cleaner Saturday in F1 Australian GP at Albert Park where McLaren duo took charge with Lando Norris finishing ahead of Oscar Piastri by 0.084s margin to take pole. They started the season as per the expectation but Ferrari floundered their chances finishing only seventh and eighth.
Charles Leclerc lamented inconsistency especially when they started to push which undone their Q3 run. He didn’t improve in his final attempt to be only seventh, as teammate Lewis Hamilton made a step to close in on the Monegasque, but it wasn’t enough to finish any better than eighth.
The Brit admitted taking slower time to learn the new car and the team, as he is still not 100% accustomed to every detail of Ferrari’s working style. Their loss did help Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Mercedes’ George Russell to finish third and fourth, even with slightly slower machinery.
The Dutchman showed decent pace after over night work, while the Brit continued his so-so run. Their teammates were knocked out in Q1, where Andrea Kimi Antonelli faced floor damage after kerb run to drop out after performance drop. The Kiwi made too many mistakes on his final attempt for the drop.
Norris: “Tricky because of my first lap and going off track. And just with how tight it’s been, especially with Oscar. But yeah, it’s a tough one because you want to take a lot of risks, especially on this track. It’s a track where you’ve got to commit. You know what your target is, and once you turn in you’re kind of hoping for the best in a lot of cases. You want to take those risks. Obviously, I took too many on my first lap and got track limits, so I was in a difficult position knowing how much risk I wanted to take. But I put it together well, it was just a clean lap, no mistakes, and that was enough. So happy. A perfect way to start the season. We were decent in Bahrain and I think we’re going to expect to be pretty good here. We were pretty good here last year, and that was with a much worse car. We’re going in with one target, which is to be at the top and to have two cars at the top. But conditions are going to be unexpected, so we just have to go in prepared.
“That’s all we can really do. There have obviously been discussions because… We’re prepared because we know we’re going to have more of this kind of thing over the season. There are clearly rules we cannot cross. Both cars must always stay in the race, but we’re both competitors. That’s clear. We both want to fight for a win and victories. But there are boundaries around the car—just a little more space here and there. We’re free to race, free to try and win races. But what won us the Constructors’ last year was how we helped one another and how we kept things clean. How there was order when there needed to be. A lot of that was later in the season when external things were happening. Right now, there’s none of that. So we’re both excited. Of course, we’ll have our morning talks, but that’s normal.”
Piastri: “It was pretty good. I was happy with it. This weekend I’ve been happy with the laps we’ve been putting in and how I have been executing them apart from the first lap of Q3. But apart from that, I’ve been happy with how I’ve driven. I think the last lap, there’s nothing I’m majorly kicking myself about. The gap is very tight, obviously, and I just needed that little bit more. I went a bit deep into Turn 11. With these tyres, with the hot temperature, as soon as you slide them a little bit or get them dirty, they drop off a lot. I struggled a lot with the last sector and then went off at the second-last corner. That’s the fine line around here. I think that’s been a little bit of a struggle with our car so far—it’s been quick, but it bites at times.
“I’m pretty happy with the job I did, and I’ll go back and see where it could have been a little bit better. We’re free to race each other. I want to win as much as Lando does. He summed it up well. I think in any team, not just McLaren, the number one rule is no contact. We must give each other space. If there are opportunities for either of us to take advantage of situations, we will. But ultimately, we are racing for the team. That’s important. We’ve said many times that the teamwork we showed last year helped us win the Constructors’. It’s important to recognise that fact. The car has been strong for a while, but also the team is very strong too. That’s as good as I can put it.”
Verstappen: “I think so. We had a bit of a tough start. This has never really been a good track for us. So it took a bit of time to understand how we could improve the situation. We did that today. Honestly, I’m quite surprised to be sitting here after yesterday. I felt confident, I felt one with the car, but clearly, we were lacking a bit of pace. Overall, I’m happy with the laps in qualifying. I tried to really extract everything. The tyres are quite sensitive around here, with all these high-speed corners, but I’m happy to be here. Just trying to fine-tune the balance. The car came alive a little more. Yesterday it was, in general, quite OK to drive, just too slow. Today it was a little faster. But clearly still not fast enough. Still, to be ahead of Ferrari and Mercedes here is good for us.”
Leclerc: “As soon as we started to push the car more and more and more, we found more and more inconsistency, which was a bit of a shame. We lost a little bit the pace throughout qualifying. Q1 we were good, Q2 a little bit less good, and Q3 we had to push a lot to try and make the lap time. But we didn’t really follow the track for some reason, so we’ve got to look into it and maximise tomorrow, especially with struggling Friday. I think we’ve lost relative competitiveness compared to yesterday, which we know what we’ve changed, so we’ll have to look into it for sure. I think tyres are also where in the last sector you have the most overheating. And I was struggling with it today a lot more than I did yesterday. So this is something that we’ll look into. It’s only the first race of the season and it’s only a starting point. It’s going to be a very long season.
“Just got to stay calm, maximize points and work from there. I think this car has a lot of potential, but for now, we don’t seem to be seeing the right window to find it. Today in Q3 was particularly difficult. Before that, I had no signs of this, until now I would say no, it is not difficult to drive. We’ve got to wait and see. Today was particularly difficult in Q3 especially. I hope we are fighting closer to McLaren. The feeling is that we are closer than the P1 now. Just in Q3, we lost our balance, we lost the window. When the gaps are so tight, it’s very difficult to put a lap together as a driver. I think the gaps today are bigger than what they should be.”
Hamilton: “We’re just improving every single lap, session on session. Big learning curve this weekend. The car was so much different from the moment I left the pit lane, just feeling so much different than I’ve ever experienced here. It’s been a lot slower process for me to really build confidence in the car. If you look at the high speed everywhere, I’ve been down all weekend. Charles just had it from the get go. From the minute he went out, he knew what the car does. For me, I was just building up to that through the weekend. I think I got a lot closer towards it to be that close to Charles in my first qualifying session in the car against a great qualifier. The car’s different from braking, through corner balance, it’s a lot different to what I had. The mechanical balance shift that you have is much, much different to what I had in the previous car. The high speed balance, the low speed balance is quite a shift. She behaves a little bit differently. Honestly, I thought I was further along than I was and then I got here. FP1, I was like, jeez, ‘I’ve still got a way to go’. There’s still a tonne of tools that are popping out like, ‘hey, what about this? I’ve never tried that.
“What does it do?’ It’s one thing saying it, but actually going out and feeling it. I think we did some good work with trying to move the car forward. As I said, when you have a problem in the car and you come in, normally when you’ve got the experience you can say, ‘this is where I want to go with it, but I don’t know which tool to use at the moment.’ I’m heavily reliant for the first time on my engineers. They’ve done a great job, but in the past I would say, ‘Bono, this is what I want, that setting, this setting,’ and I can’t do that anymore. It is not buttons, it is all mechanical, it is suspension. I have never driven the car in the wet, I don’t even know where the wet switch is. I don’t know which buttons I’ve got to switch towards tomorrow, so that’s going to be new. We’re using Brembos [brakes], for example, which I’ve not used at all – probably not since I was much younger. I don’t think I’ve used them for a long, long time. So how do the Brembos behave in the wet? I don’t know if they’re glazed, what settings I’m gonna have to use with this car? It’s all different.
“The wets often been something I’ve always enjoyed. Growing up in England, it was always wet, so it’s been a comfort zone for me. But as I said, I’m going actually for the first time in the wet in an uncomfortable position, because I’ve never driven this car, so it’s going to be a shock to the system when I get out there, but I’m going to be learning on the fly and just giving it everything. We were definitely overheating [the tyres], so I would imagine, as the track was dropping in temperature, our approach probably should have adjusted, but we didn’t. I just did the same thing, same prep, every session, and we probably need to be a bit more dynamic, maybe.”
Antonelli: “There was gravel on the kerb and when I went through it, I picked up quite a bit of damage. I was losing quite bit on the straights first of all because the floor was scrubbing on the track, and then I lost quite a bit of aero load because obviously it was not aligned as well, as one part touching the tarmac, so definitely quite unfortunate. I think P3 was very-very positive, that’s why it is quite disappointing the result because I felt we could have fought for much better position, but it is what it is, we will try to move on and see what we can do in the race.”
Lawson: “We don’t really know to be honest. We definitely overheated the tyres at the end of the lap. But obviously, we will be looking into it. We definitely overheated [the tyres] at the end of the lap, but obviously it’s something we will look into. Would it have helped doing FP3? I think today was a sort of quali prep day. Everybody was using soft tyres this morning. I think we had the car in a good window. Honestly, it wasn’t bad and the lap we were on was perfectly fine. I just had a snap through the high speed that overheated the tyres, and then the last sector was basically gone from there. It is hard to know, but we were on a good lap, I think it would have been well in Q2. We made a big step today, or at least Max did with the car, it was in a bit of a window which was positive. Obviously for me in not doing the laps [in FP3] was pretty tough, and it was pretty costly in not doing much quali prep for the day. I don’t think it is car-specfic, it is not like this car is way harder to drive and that is why I made mistakes, it is just a tough track and a lack of driving and then being stupid.”
The gainers were not just Verstappen and Russell, but also Visa Cash App RB’s Tsunoda and Williams’ Albon, who ended up fifth and sixth. The Japanese got some help from Norris’ tow but showed good pace all-round to make it well inside the Top 10 against some experienced campaigners.
Albon, meanwhile, managed to spring up a lap when needed the most as their teammates ended up 10th and 11th, with Carlos Sainz ahead of Isack Hadjar. The Spaniard felt he couldn’t prepare well for the Q2 and Q3 laps, while the latter only missed out Top 10 by just.
The top half also had Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, who was pleased to make it in on a difficult track for the car. Both the Frenchman and Tsunoda admitted to having run hybrid car keeping rain in mind. Teammate Jack Doohan might have finished higher if not for the yellow flag for Hamilton’s spin.
There was damage to Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso’s floor too in Q2 which hampered his lap, but he was pleased to finish 12th as Lance Stroll was not far behind. Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto made it in Q2 but a snap at Turn 4 cost him to finish any higher, where he didn’t think Q3 was possible.
Teammate Nico Hulkenberg was out in Q1 due to traffic and not having 100% confidence in the new car, as Haas’ Esteban Ocon lamented lack of pace all-through the weekend. Teammate Oliver Bearman did not manage to complete any lap after gearbox issue derailed his run.
Tsunoda: “I am very happy with the result, was able to make a step session by session. The last lap was definitely the best and quality lap out of the sessions so far. But also, I got bit of luck from Lando’s car, bit of tow into Turn 9, so definitely appreciate it. But overall, it was a magical lap. P5 when compared to last year is better result, I was worried that I won’t arrive with the performance of the car after Bahrain. So, it was a surprise that we had a good pace, consistently so far throughout the week, feeling ready to fight. I enjoyed the field in Top 10, those experienced drivers feel very-very fast and I definitely wanted to finish ahead of them, it will be good and I did it, so if I am able to out-perform them, it is good.”
Albon: “Yuki told me, I got a tow from McLaren, so I don’t if that did the job. I am really happy with my lap though, it felt like I got most of it. These tyres are super sensitive. At the beginning it was hard to understand why the tyre was going one way or the other way in terms of front deg or rear deg. But by the last one of the day, I kind of hooked it up and got the lap time out of it, I am very happy. I feel we have obviously done a huge step from last year to this year, not just in terms of performance but also in terms of parts and weight and everything else. We have approached this weekend very differently to last year. On our side, I think we were favouring a bit more race pace than qualifying but our race pace on Friday looked really impressive. I do think we focused bit more on the race car than qualifying car as a general rule of thumb from last year to this year.”
Sainz: “First of all, very happy for the team, for Alex, even for myself, to be in Q3 with my first quali with Williams. And if you would have told us three months ago that we would have one car P6 and the other P10, we would have definitely taken it. So congrats to the whole team and to everyone involved. At the same time, obviously for myself, I had a bit of a scrappy qualifying. Honestly, since FP2, FP3 on the soft tyres, I’ve been struggling to know where to find the lap time with the out-lap, with the setup of the car, I felt like I was always one step behind, always trailing and reacting to the circumstances, rather than being a bit of a step ahead. But it’s completely normal, and in a tight field you’re going to pay, and today I paid the price a bit in Q3, but as I said, it’s only a matter of time before it starts coming and putting together better laps, and I cannot wait.
“Everyone who’s changed teams, everyone who is a bit more new to the situation, you can see everyone’s trailing a bit in qualifying, because you’re always one step behind. And when you know a car very well, you can always be one step ahead, and that’s the difference between being one or two tenths in front or being one or two tenths behind. I feel like this is just the beginning. I’m just going to get better at it, and I’m just going to keep improving. Massive learning curve for me and margin of improvement, which P10 in a first quali with Williams, is good news for me.”
Alonso: “I’m happy with today’s feeling, first qualifying of the year, the first moment that you are in the same moment with the same conditions to everyone, so there is always a little bit of curiosity on where are you, so we were in the top 10. We were quite fast, then yeah, I made a mistake in Q2, run one. I went a little bit wide in Turn 10, I think I had damaged the floor a little bit. So in Q2, I was not maybe 100% with the car, even though still, P12 with a not perfect car… so maybe Q3 was possible today and to be the first qualifying of the year, I think it’s a good sign. I think this morning it was a little bit weird. We experimented a little bit with the set-up.
“It didn’t work. I was P18 or something like that. We revert to yesterday’s set-up, and in qualifying, the car was fast, so I don’t know, we are close to the top 10, close to Q3, so I think it’s a good start. We need to build from here. Everyone did improve, you see Alpine and Bortoleto in Q2, you see Williams in Top 6 for Albon, so it a very competitive field, so we need to improve, we need to raise our level, and don’t make any mistake like I did today because it could be very costly.”
Bortoleto: “I tried a bit too hard in Turn 4 and ended up running a bit too much on the kerb there, and let’s say skateboarding the car a bit. Initially, I was not even sure I could keep it still on track – I was a bit too risky there. But I knew that, to put the car maybe further away, even in Q3, that would be very tricky today, because I don’t think we had the pace to. I needed to make a perfect lap, that’s ended up as a no lap, but quite happy with Q1 – still a solid result there, and solid first quali ever in my career in F1. It’s not an easy track, it’s a very tricky one. You see a lot of experienced drivers, World Champions, spinning and making mistakes. But that’s our level – when we are fighting for that millisecond, when we are fighting for nothing basically, we need to push the car to the limit, and sometimes you end up running too wide or not finishing your lap.”
Doohan: “Q1 was strong. Q2 was looking strong as well. We were confident for Q3, just got a bit unlucky with the yellow flag with Lewis. All in all, was looking very strong; even on that lap, we were two-tenths up before that happened. That was out of our control, so I think we did everything we could. We just have to turn our heads and look forward to tomorrow. We switched over to a more sort of standard place for qualifying. I felt a lot more comfortable straight away, which helped a lot. And we were taking steps forward. Unfortunately, we got a little bit of misfortune. Sure, it won’t be the last time, but we just look forward to maximising it for tomorrow.
“I backed out of the lap, but already before the chicane I had no DRS. We were only two-tenths down on Oscar’s 15.4 at the end of Sector 2 even without DRS, so I think the lap was looking strong for a high 15. Once you have no DRS, these two straights, it’s at least six-tenths, and then I have [Hamilton] facing the other way. So, I backed out of the lap. The positives were we were slightly in front of Pierre on both runs. Not that that’s important, but it’s good confidence for myself. I think we’re in a good place for tomorrow.”
Bearman: “A pretty unforgiving circuit, and two seemingly small errors giving big consequences and missing out on all of my running. Clumsiness from my side to make these errors, honestly. And then that’s not good enough. And of course, the gearbox issue in the qualifying pretty much sums up what we’ve had so far. I just dipped a bit on the grass and spun. It’s a long season ahead of us. I’m not going to get down about two days in a very long season. I think as a team, we’re struggling a bit more than we anticipated and more than we looked in Bahrain. We’ve got a bit of work to do on that side of things, on pure car performance. And of course, I haven’t helped out very much, because the team’s pretty much been running with one car all weekend.”
Here’s how F1 Australian GP qualifying panned out