Charles Leclerc headed the first day of practice for the 2025 Formula 1 season, but even he isn’t fully at one with his new car yet.
“We did good preparation work because the feeling with the car was good,” said Leclerc after today’s practice sessions. “There’s obviously things that we need to improve, as always, and I’m not very happy with the balance yet.
“But we are in a much better place compared to Bahrain testing. There’s still some performance to find but that’s the same for everybody in the paddock. These cars are pretty new for everyone and so you’ve got to push it to understand where exactly the limit is. But it’s been a solid first day and now we’ve got to wait and see how it goes tomorrow when we push a bit more.”
In 24 hours’ time we’ll know the pecking order for the first of this year’s 24 rounds. But how closely will that resemble what we saw on Friday? Leclerc admits it’s “too early to say.”
“I don’t think we’ve seen the real pace of everybody yet,” he said. “I think some teams might hide their gain a bit more than others.
“For sure McLaren is up there. I think Red Bull might be struggling a little bit more for now, but you never know with them. Especially with Max [Verstappen], you can never really rule them out. So I’m sure they will be in the fight and Mercedes looks strong as well.”
McLaren looked strong over a multi-lap run, but Lando Norris said he found it difficult to get the best out of the car over a single flying lap. “We’ve got a good baseline but I’m certainly not happy, not confident with the car in terms of finding the best balance and being consistent enough,” he said. “Especially on low-fuel.”
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“On high fuel, I felt good,” he added. “Just low fuel, still similar to Bahrain, too many inconsistencies, too many problems, so a bit of a struggle.”
Verstappen took pole position at this round for the last two years in a row. But he appears doubtful of a repeat after ending today’s running seventh. “We’ve never really been that good here since that new Tarmac update,” he explained.
“But still, it’s the same for everyone. So we just have to make sure that we find a bit more pace. At the moment we are definitely lacking a bit to fight up front.”
Strikingly, there was no repeat of Verstappen’s complaints about his car balance which were regular occurences last year as they began to encounter problems with their RB20.
“The balance wasn’t even completely out,” he said, “no massive or major problems, but somehow the grip was not coming. I was just struggling on all four tyres, really, in sector one and the last sector. That means of course that we are not really up there at the moment.”
However from where they are at the moment it would be a surprise if Red Bull did not make a significant step forwards on Saturday. And the fight for the final places in Q3 could be incredibly close.
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Teams’ 2024 performance in context
NB. Racing Bulls was RB in 2024
Before diving into this year’s data, a reminder of the situation at last year’s Australian Grand Prix. This was the third round of 2024, at a point in the season where Red Bull was clearly the team to beat. Verstappen arrived in Melbourne having won the previous nine races in a row, and 19 of the past 20, stretching back into 2023.
What we didn’t know then was that Red Bull were about to be caught and overhauled by some of their rivals. They narrowly had the quickest car over a single lap over the full season, but were much more competitive in Melbourne than at most rounds. As the data above shows, only Ferrari got within 0.5% of Red Bull’s fastest lap time at Albert Park last year.
Conversely, McLaren were less competitive in Australia than they were over the rest of the season. The same goes, to an even greater degree, for Mercedes, Haas and above all Alpine, who were still struggling with an overweight car 12 months ago.
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Teams’ progress vs 2024
Three teams have already lapped quicker around Melbourne than they did last year. First among them, unsurprisingly given their poor showing last year, is Alpine. However given the strides they made at the end of last year, and the promise they showed in testing, were not fully reflected in 14th and 15th on the times sheets today, perhaps because Pierre Gasly often struggled with traffic.
Red Bull is at the other extreme. Their best lap time so far is 1.1 seconds slower than they managed in 2024, while every other team is within 0.6s or better.
Are Red Bull struggling so much with their car that they may fail to improve their lap time year-on-year? It seems unlikely. Verstappen suffered a lot with traffic during his qualifying simulation run in second practice, eventually setting his best time on his sixth lap, by which time his soft rubber would have been fading. Pace-setter Charles Leclerc did his after just a single, slow preparation lap.
However one factor is likely to inhibit how easily Red Bull and their rivals can find more lap time tomorrow: The track is forecast to be significantly hotter come the qualifying hour.
Racing Bulls have already beaten their 2024 reference lap time – just – and their drivers looked immediately comfortable with their cars when they switched to soft tyres in second practice. They stood out as one of the most impressive midfield teams in practice, along with Williams.
Last year’s Carlos Sainz Jnr was clearly pleased with his car’s pace so far. “It was definitely a positive Friday for us, especially FP1 was very positive,” he said. “FP2, we didn’t manage to find performance on softs, which is something we need to look into going into tomorrow, as quali obviously on softs is going to be the main focus.
“So if we manage to unlock some potential on soft tyres, we could be competitive. But the field is extremely tight. I saw the [Racing Bulls] cars doing some very fast laps also, a bit out of nowhere. Everyone seems honestly that if they put together a good lap, anyone can be in Q3.”
However Sainz has previously said he will need a few races to suss how to get the best out of his new car on the softest rubber, which this weekend is the C5. “I was very quick on mediums and very competitive also in FP1, and as soon as everyone turned up in FP2 and I went to find the lap time on soft I clearly struggled to find the lap time on that compound,” he said. “Tomorrow we will have four or five softs in quali and hopefully that will give me a chance to unlock it but in that sense there’s work to do.”
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Teams’ 2024 and 2025 times
This data shows how helpful – or, often, unhelpful – first and second practice times are to establishing the pecking order. For example, Red Bull gained significantly more time from Friday to Saturday last year than Ferrari. Another reason to expect they will pick up more time tomorrow.
All bar one of the 10 teams were covered by less than a second. The outlier is Haas, who are lagging a further six-tenths of a second, puzzled by the lack of performance from their car, the situation not helped by Oliver Bearman’s crash in first practice.
Despite being one of the teams which under-performed at this track, they are further off their 2024 pace than any team besides Red Bull. But while Red Bull appear to be holding something back, Haas seem to have had an unwelcome surprise on the first day of practice, and have just an hour of running left to figure out what’s gone wrong.
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Combined practice times
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2025 Australian Grand Prix
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