Lando Norris, Max Verstappen together with Andrea Stella and Christian Horner talk about how F1 Australian GP panned out in terms of strategy and battles.
It was a clean start for McLaren’s Lando Norris in F1 Australian GP to take the lead but Oscar Piastri lost out to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. The Australian managed to come back on the Dutchman after he started to struggle on the intermediate tyres, as McLaren ran a comfortable 1-2 then.
The switch over period worked well too as Norris maintained his lead over Piastri. But Verstappen was back in the game when the rain arrived for another time and both the McLaren cars had a moment on the gravel. The Brit managed to hang on, but the Australian lost out heavy on the grass.
Red Bull waited to pit which they eventually did and were second still. Irrespective of the strategy, they think second was the maximum they would have achieved. Norris’ moments towards the end coupled with some floor damage brought Verstappen in the game, but it wasn’t enough.
He eventually missed out by 0.875s on Norris, who learnt from 2024 misses together with McLaren, as they applied the strategy well and were decisive from before rather than wait for things to happen. There was some Verstappen scare as it always is, but the Brit managed to hold him off.
Red Bull pair of Verstappen and Horner could sense the pace advantage of McLaren in all types of conditions, especially through the low degradation. With the team ironing out issues from 2024, it makes them a formidable outfit to beat throughout the 2025 F1 season.
How race panned out –
Norris: “Very, yeah. I mean, to start the season off with a win is good enough, but to do it in such a stressful race, where it’s so easy to make a mistake, so easy to ruin everything, you know, so quickly, it can all go wrong within any second of the race – you lock up, you hit the white line wrong, you have a big snap. It was just very difficult at times to not go into a wall or a tyre barrier somewhere. That’s a big enough challenge, but then when you’ve got the weather changing and the track conditions changing, knowing when to make the correct decision to change onto a slick tyre or stay out on the Inter tyre, and then even more when I’ve got Max behind me and Oscar behind me, it’s stressful, but that’s what makes it rewarding and such a nice win.
“Yeah, difficult. A lot of tough moments. I guess that’s what makes it sweeter. But, you know, we worked a lot over the winter to prepare for a race like this because it’s where we threw away a lot of opportunities last season – Canada, Silverstone – where we were not the best at preparing and knowing how decisive we’ve got to be. And today we were very decisive. Calling to box five minutes before I boxed, but it was the right call in the end, and that won us the race. Stressful, but rewarding.”
Horner: “I think McLaren obviously have a well-balanced car particularly in Sector 3, they look strong. Max made a good start, got a little boxed in, but then a great move around the outside of Oscar, and was able to challenge Lando a little, initially. But I think we were just a little heavier on the tyre, particularly in the last sector. So then that gap started to open, Oscar was able to get back past Max. The inters were interesting because, right at the end of the stint, it started to come back again, and we started to look very competitive again. At the pit stop, we went on to the mediums, and I was somewhat surprised to see everybody going on to hards on a damp track. We felt that mediums would give a better warm up and so on.
“Then the rain came again, and it was only wet, really, in the last sector. The first two sectors were quick, and it very nearly paid off to get the overcut and get the lead. But, in the end, when it all played out, he’d managed to jump back up into second for what became an eight-lap shootout to the finish, and he very nearly nicked it at the end there. I think Lando looked like he tightened a little bit at the end of the race. He made a mistake at Turn 6, went half off the track and that gave Max a little bit of a run at a track that’s very difficult to overtake, and then, the next lap, he got another run. But yeah, a very, very close finish to an exciting race. For us, I think it’s a very solid start to what’s going to be a marathon of a year.”
Gravel moment –
Norris: “Yeah, I mean, this is a tough one. Max was on the Mediums, myself and Oscar on the Hard. So, I think we knew if it started to rain, we’d struggle more than Max. At that time, we still didn’t have all the temperature in the tyres. Also, being first, you just take the risks – how much do I push it? You don’t know if you have to… You see some drizzles of rain on the visor, and I got a call from Will saying that it’s drizzling a bit in the last sector. But you don’t know if you have to slow down five kilometres an hour, 10, 11. If you slow down 11, maybe it’s perfect; if you slow down 10, maybe you’re off. Making those decisions two metres before you brake, it’s not easy. You’ve got to do a lot of things on the fly and just wing it. Obviously, I went in a bit quick for how much rain was coming down and I’ve completely gone off.
“I’ve managed to just about get it stopped for the corner, but I looked in my mirror as I was off and saw Oscar go through the gravel as well, and Max then catching. It’s a very stressful moment because it all could have gone wrong there. If I stayed on track, I think Max probably would have passed me because he was on the Medium and probably in a better window than I had with the Hards. But we boxed, and then half the track was completely dry, and half of it was wet – kind of like a Spa kind of race. You don’t know how much to push in the dry bit because you destroy the Inters quickly. I think that’s why I struggled a bit at the end of the race – my Inters were just a little destroyed from when it was still dry. A lot of things to factor in, so to get it all right and deal with the stress in a good way was very nice.”
Work on strategy –
Norris: “I mean, like I said, we lost out on a few races last year. Not even ones where it was a guaranteed win, but I think Silverstone was probably a guaranteed win. I don’t know what call we made, but it was a shocking one and we accepted that. Canada wasn’t a guaranteed win. George was quick, Mercedes was quick, and Max was quick. But we didn’t nail the strategy. We knew we had to improve in certain areas. There’s been a lot of work on trying to make sure we’re snappier and better with communication. To be honest, today, I wouldn’t say it was snappy – I felt like I was having story time with Will on the radio. We were talking so much every lap; I might as well have left my radio open the whole race. It’s a difficult situation being first and not knowing what to do with tyres. You just know someone behind will get it right behind you, because they’re going to gamble something, and it’ll work out for them. I didn’t want to lose out to someone in the middle of the pack who gambled and somehow won. So, I was just making sure we were prepared.
“I was making sure the guys on the pit wall and everyone back in Mission Control at MTC were aware of what was going on. Making sure we were on top of it, ready to make the right call. That right call was made literally half a second before I boxed, as I was still trying to save the car and didn’t shunt. It turned out to be the right decision. It was more about relaying information and making sure we’re not overdoing it, a good amount of information—giving them my feelings. A little drizzle seemed to make a big difference for us today, especially for me on the hard tyres. That’s what allowed us to make that call to box as quickly as we did. There’s a lot more behind the scenes that even I don’t know. A lot of it is the strategy team doing their work. I owe them a lot of credit today because they’ve put in a lot of time and effort over the winter. It’s not just about driving a car quickly on a day like today, strategy is a big part of it too. I owe a lot to Will and the strategy team today.”
Stella: “Both Lando and Oscar gave very precise feedback and very useful for our decision making at the pitwall. At some stage, I think this is the case you refer to. At some stage when we had rain possibly coming, Lando asked ‘should we go preventatively for intermediate tyres?’ We used some of the learning from the past to make sure we were dealing with this with a certain like ‘lets not get ahead of ourselves’. But in fairness, Lando, considering in which the way the rain came, probably having on one lap earlier on intermediate tyres, it would have been wise. It is always quite tricky, in these kind of situations but I am very happy personally with how the pitwall together with the drivers assessed the situation.
“And then made the decisions, if anything we should check as a team if rainy conditions and warn our drivers earlier that there was a wall of water that was approaching the last sector. In terms of the decision making between when the rain started in the middle of the lap, in the middle of the track, it is very difficult to say ‘do I go preventively or wait for it to hit it?’ Obviously, if you wait and hit it then you should sort of know that, that’s the case. Clearly it was told that as soon as the rain wets the track, it is in, obviously they got the answers themselves in a costly manner.”
Horner: “That’s where you’re working with the driver. The first two sectors were quick but the third sector was so down at that point. We knew that the rain wasn’t going to hang around for long and, if you could just bank that track position, it’s so valuable here because you just can’t overtake. So that’s what we were rolling the dice a little – McLaren were super conservative. Both of their drivers had big moments, and it looked like it might just play out, but if the rain had veered off, then we could have been lucky. But congratulations to Lando. He drove a good race today and in difficult conditions for all of the drivers. We take a lot of encouragement out of that race, the pace we had at the end – the other teams, it was clear what the pecking order was today in terms of pace.”
Verstappen closing in –
Norris: “The thing is, I knew I was going to struggle a bit because I put the Inters on two laps before Max, and with half the track still being dry, I pushed. Even the high-speed was dry, so I kind of destroyed my tyres a little. The front tyres— you could see the rubber was already rolling over on the edges. I knew my pace advantage wouldn’t be as much as at the beginning of the race. At the very beginning, when it was wettest, Max was just as quick as us. As it dried, we got a lot quicker, and Red Bull started to struggle. So, I knew Max would be quicker in those last few laps, and I knew he would risk more because there were only a few laps left. I did make a mistake at Turn 6 – I just put a wheel on the gravel and lost all my momentum and drive. Max got within DRS, and DRS really helped him stay there. It’s tough because it’s not just the pressure of him being there, it’s the pressure of knowing that if I put a wheel too close to a white line on entry, I’m off. If I clip the kerb wrong in Turn 6, I’m off. If I dip a wheel in the gravel, I get a bad run and he’s past. There are so many little things that can go wrong.
“Just trying to concentrate on not locking up, not rear locking, not hitting the kerbs wrong, but still trying to go quicker than before because the guy behind is doing the same. It was stressful. I’m not going to lie. I was checking my mirrors a lot. Even Will came on the radio and told me to chill out a bit. He knows, and Jarv, my performance engineer, knows very quickly from my driving when I’m pushing too much or when I’m pushing the entries too much. They’re quick to jump in and say, “Do this better” or “Watch out for that” because they know what I struggle with. Especially in a situation like that. That situation was new for me. I’ve never led a race with five laps to go with Max behind me, trying to put me under pressure, in these conditions. Maybe Max has had that a few times – he’s raced against Lewis a lot and can deal with it better than I can. For me, it was a first. So, it was about seeing how I handled it when I got there. I’m happy I got through it and stayed calm. It’s something I improved from last year.”
Verstappen: “No, not so much, to be honest. I just tried my best, tried to be close, tried to put a bit of pressure on, but it’s very hard to pass around here. There was only one line. Even if I had gotten a run into whatever, Turn 9, you have to go onto the wet part, so you can’t really do a lot. But at least it was close. It looked good on TV. Two more laps! We were on the Medium, and of course, you never know how that’s going to work out. But I thought it was quite a sensible call with 15, 16, or 20 laps to go when the Safety Car came out. Then, of course, it started to rain. I saw them go off in front of me, kept it clean, and when I saw Oscar rejoining, I thought, “Well, let’s stay out,” because it was only those three corners. The rest was still dry. When I continued, basically, the first two sectors were fine – it was just if I could survive the final sector.
“I think that lap I did was okay. If there wasn’t much more rain coming, I thought it could work. You also have to factor in that even if they caught me on an Inter, they’d have to box again for slicks, if it’s not going to rain anymore. So, it was fine. I thought, “Yeah, we’ll do another lap,” but then, unfortunately, on that lap, the first sector was still okay-ish, but then in Sector 2, it started to rain a bit too much and we had to box. But in hindsight, it wouldn’t have mattered. If I’d boxed with Lando, it would have been P2. If I’d boxed the next lap, it would have been P2. And the lap that I did box, I was also P2. So, we tried something else—it might have worked. In a way, it didn’t work, but we didn’t lose any position, so it’s fine.”
Stella: “With the pace of Verstappen and Red Bull, it is never a surprise. It is Verstappen and Red Bull. They know how to make quick cars, they know how to race fast and they know how to race well in this kind of tricky and changeable conditions. So not a surprise that Verstappen was so close to us and he was in contention for the victory until the last metre of the race. I think probably in the early stages of the race, in order to try and stay with Lando, he might have used his tyres a little too hard and that’s why he then lost some of the pace and during the first stint we could open a gap that was equivalent to a pit stop. I think he might used a bit too much of the tyres at that time. I think every driver that races for victories tries and give it a go and see what happens with the tyres. So overall not a surprise but like I said before we will have to see a few more races to actually see what is the real competitiveness situation.
“One issue we had in the final laps of the race with Lando is that he had the floor pretty badly damaged. He lost aerodynamic performance and this meant that he couldn’t utilise the full pace of the car. So I think the situation got more tense than would have normally been the case because of this damage on Lando’s car. I think how strong the car was we could see actually with Oscar that in the space of a few laps he recovered three, four positions. I think in normal circumstances it shouldn’t have been that difficult for Lando. We are not sure if it was that on the gravel when the rain came or if its an off that he had after the re-start. We are not sure, we will be assess that through the data, by looking at where we see step down in the aerodynamic performance.”
Horner: “You never know. They had enough fuel to do another five laps, with all the Safety Cars, but you never know – the chequered flag is what it is. I thought, if he got a half a chance, he was just going to send it! And I think Lando knew that as well.”
Pace –
Verstappen: “I think it’s good compared to the teams behind us. But if you look at the first stint, we were quite a bit off. As soon as the tyres started to overheat, we had no chance. McLaren just took off. So, we still have a lot of work to do to fight for a win. But yeah, I’m happy that we are second here. It’s basically one place better than we should have been. And it’s 18 more points than I had last year at this race.”
Horner: “I think it’s different to everybody. And what’s quite strange is that they enjoy great warm up but, also, very low degradation – usually one comes at the expense of the other. So they’ve, certainly at this circuit, seem to have mastered that.”
Here’s race start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-australian-grand-prix-verstappen-jumps-piastri-as-doohan-crashes-out-a-wet-race-start-in-melbourne.1826723506326238911
Here’s moment for McLaren drivers: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-australian-grand-prix-piastris-chances-of-home-win-slip-away-as-more-rain-hits-albert-park.1826731533741845302
Here’s win for Lando Norris: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-australian-grand-prix-norris-crosses-the-line-to-take-victory-in-the-opening-race-of-the-season.1826731741835860795
Here’s how F1 Australian GP panned out
