If he is to make a tilt at this season’s Formula One world championship, Lando Norris can consider that he made the case as leading contender definitively at the very opening meeting of 2025. In weathering the storm for his victory at the Australian Grand Prix, Norris demonstrated control, precision and an iron will under pressure. There is an awful long way to go but at the death on a treacherous wet track and harried by a charging Max Verstappen, Norris held his nerve like a champion.
In the build-up to the race, it was weather for the ducks on Albert Park Lake as waves of rain sashayed across the circuit, duly playing a significant part in its outcome.
Norris had its measure but most significantly when conditions settled and a dry line emerged McLaren showed their true hand. Their car was blisteringly quick. Norris and his Australian team-mate Oscar Piastri putting at times up to one-and-a-half seconds a lap on the field.
A pace that suggests even catching them might be a positively Herculean task for their rivals this season and prompting Norris to concede, having been furiously bet-hedging during the pre-season, that his team were indeed now clear favourites. Norris’s win was a masterwork for the driver but the real takeaway from Melbourne was how it augers for the season, confirming the strength of McLaren’s ride and its march on the opposition.
José Mourinho takes Saint-Maximin to task in a remarkably public spat
Lara Gillespie named Sportswoman of the Month for February
The age of rugby imperialism is here, and Ireland must realise we sit with the ‘Have-nots’
Italy match gives Ireland ‘massive opportunity’ to turn bad day into start of better times
The confidence in the balance, handling and grip was in abundance when it mattered, having developed their car well over the winter with what team principal Andrea Stella described as an aggressive approach. Only Red Bull’s Verstappen could stay in touch, and then but briefly, with Mercedes and Ferrari trailing well off the Dutchman.
The most crucial long-term factor on this evidence is that the McLaren is not only quick but also enormously good on its tyres, the drivers able to lean on them hard as Verstappen discovered when his intermediate rubber began to give and the two McLarens hared off into the middle distance.
They were very much in a race of their own for large parts as all around them others flew off hither and thither in the wet. From rookie Isack Hadjar, who failed even to make the start, crashing out on the formation lap; to the old hands of double world champion Fernando Alonso, also ending with a big old slide into the barriers.
Fortunately Piastri was keen on making a fight out of it and duly did so even through a brief intervention of “hold-station” team orders to allow a period of passing backmarkers, foreshadowing perhaps that McLaren’s biggest headache this year might be how they manage these two chargers.
Yet a final showdown against Norris for the local boy who grew up 15 minutes from the circuit was denied when a sudden, late shower descended.
It hit mid-lap and literally seconds after McLaren had told their men to pit for wet rubber. The right call, just a fraction too late. With the track awash Norris went wide into the gravel and just held it to then dive into the pits. But Piastri spun out, impotent, wheel-spinning in the grass and dropped to the back. Knowing he had the pace to force a thrilling fight with his team-mate he might, as they say in Melbourne, have been as mad as a frog in a sock to have lost it in that split second. A recovery to ninth cold comfort for the Aussie.
McLaren had long been debating with their drivers when to pit, indeed Stella conceded that a lap earlier would have been the ticket but alas too late. Norris then had just come out on top but still faced a nail-biting finale, chased by Verstappen on fresher rubber.
Amid all of which there were striking cameos too, both engrossing and for Ferrari at least what might be considered educational.
Here then was Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli more than returning on the immense faith the team had placed in the 18-year-old in bringing him in to replace Lewis Hamilton. That he is quick was well known but the execution and incisive flair to come through the field from 16th to fourth place, including a flurry of overtakes in the final stages, absolutely stirred the heart.
Contrastingly there were fewer fireworks for Ferrari, but rather an indication that solidly stoking the Scuderia’s fire is in order. Hamilton opened his highly anticipated debut in red with only 10th place and his team-mate Charles Leclerc in eighth. A salutary indication of the pecking order, at least in these opening phases of the season.
For Hamilton this was another advance in adapting to his new team and his new car, not least in some terse conversations with his race engineer Riccardo Adami. His assessment of his ride was blunt. “I’m grateful I got through it,” he said. “I didn’t have any confidence in it unfortunately, so I’m going to make some changes next week to the car.”
At the sharp end, however, it was Norris who held the attention at the death, as he had from the off. Verstappen flew at him with DRS but the British driver, who was nursing a damaged floor, rose to the challenge, flawless and final, giving the Dutchman nothing and taking the flag by just under a second. The sun duly broke through the clouds for the first time and with it what looks to be an enormously bright future for McLaren. – Guardian
