Lando Norris kept Max Verstappen at sword’s length over the final laps of the Australian Grand Prix to claim victory in the season-opener.
He was the strongest threat to Verstappen’s fourth consecutive championship victory last year, and is arguably the most significant competitor the Red Bull driver has faced since pipping Lewis Hamilton to win his first championship in controversial circumstances in 2021.
Not since the conclusion to that championship, when Hamilton won consecutively in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, has any driver other than Verstappen managed to win two grands prix in a row. But Norris changed that by following up his victory in last year’s season finale.
It was a significant win for various reasons, not least the fact it dislodged Verstappen from the top of the standings for the first time in over 1,000 days, as covered here earlier. Norris leads the points for the first time in his career, not that he is setting too much store by that. “It’s great, doesn’t mean anything, I’ve not won it so I don’t really care at the minute,” he responded when it was pointed out to him after the race.
It was also only the second time in Norris’s cars he has completed a hat trick of winning from pole position while setting the fastest lap (the latter feat, for the first time since 2018, no longer awards a bonus point). He previously did so at the Dutch Grand Prix last year.
Norris scored his 10th pole position, matching Jochen Rindt; fifth grand prix victory, equalling Giuseppe Farina, Clay Regazzoni, John Watson, Michele Alboreto and Keke Rosberg; and 13th fastest lap, tying with Jacky Ickx, Alan Jones and Riccardo Patrese.
He gave McLaren their first win in the season-opening round of the championship, and their first victory in the Australian Grand Prix, since 2012. Then as last weekend, McLaren also locked out the front row of the grid, though Norris should be grateful it wasn’t their second-placed starter who won, as on that occasion, when Jenson Button got the jump on Lewis Hamilton. Starts were not a strength of Norris’s last year, but he successfully converted pole position into the lead on this occasion.
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For the first time in six years, the new Formula 1 season began at the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne. It should have done in 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic forced the postponement of the first seven rounds of the world championship. The season instead opened in Austria, where Norris made his first appearance on the podium in the first round of the season.
This year George Russell reached the podium in the opening round for the first time in his career. He was followed by his new team mate, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who impressed on his debut by climbing 12 places to finish fourth.
Antonelli, 18, became the second-youngest driver in F1 history to score points. Verstappen was 17 when he finished seventh in the 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix, two weeks after making his debut in Melbourne. He is the first Italian driver to score points in F1 since Antonio Giovinazzi at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in 2021.
Alexander Albon brought great cheer to Williams by finishing fifth. That was their best result since Russell’s second place in the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, which officially lasted just one lap in dire conditions. They haven’t had a better result in a full-length race since Lance Stroll finished third for them at Baku in 2017. Felipe Massa was the last driver to finish that high for them in a season-opener, at Melbourne in 2016.
Stroll also had a positive weekend in Australia. After 11 races without scoring, he ended the longest point-less run of his grand prix career by finishing sixth.
He was one of several drivers who rose up the order by pitting at the right time when it rained. Ferrari kept both their drivers out, which meant Hamilton led a lap on his debut for the team. Unfortunately by that point the track was sodden and he was on slicks. He fell to ninth, then Oscar Piastri passed him around the outside at turn nine on the final lap.
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Hamilton’s eventual finishing position of 10th was the worst for a driver on their debut for the team since Luca Badoer’s notoriously unsuccessful two-race spell as a substitute for Massa in 2009:
It could have been worse, and it was for Isack Hadjar, who Hamilton’s father consoled after he crashed out on the formation lap prior to the start. The rookie became the first driver to fail to start on his debut since 2015. At least he qualified, which was more than could be said for Roberto Merhi, whose Marussia was not ready to run at all at this race 10 years ago.
Over to you
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