What did we learn from the 2025 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix?

The 2025 Formula One season went lights out in the land down under, in a race made chaotic by the wet weather shenanigans. Many of the teams and drivers made headlines for what their season could look like, with some making a jump up the field and others looking like they’d made a step-down and underperformed their expectations. 

Mclaren set the pace

At the weekend, McLaren edged out their competitors with their pace, with Lando Norris taking pole in Saturday’s qualifying and Oscar Piastri coming in P2. The two papayas even managed to pull away from Max Verstappen in the middle part of the race. Still, the rain made things chaotic and caused a few strategic blunders.  

But unlike the wet races last season, Norris came away with his maiden victory. McLaren has made a big jump into 2025. They have certainly set themselves apart from Red Bull, Mercedes, and Ferrari, who, heading into China, could be battling amongst themselves. With the current pace shown in Australia, it doesn’t seem like anyone has the edge over the current World Constructors Champions, at least for now. 

Williams find new pace

It’s been a rough number of years Williams from DNF struggles or bottom of the grid finishes to then multiple crashes, but the first weekend of the new season for the team, saw them making a surprising jump up the field as they made it into Q3 on the Saturday with Albon coming in P6, out qualifying the two Ferrari drivers, whilst Sainz managed P10.

A refreshing result in qualifying for James Vowels and the Williams team, who had been for years the slowest car on the grid, however things do seem to be going in the right direction despite Sainz’s crash during the race.

Their pace was the strongest of the other midfield teams and yes, a safety car did help with that, but I think even if you look back to who they out qualified Saturday, finishing ahead of Sauber, Aston Martin, Alpine and Haas. It has been the best possible start to the season for Williams.  

Ferrari make worst start to the season since 2009 

Every season, it gets harder for the tifosi. After all the hype in pre-season with Lewis Hamilton’s arrival to Maranello, when it finally came to the first race weekend, the pace was not there for the Scuderia, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton coming in P7 and P8, despite Charles showing pace in FP3.  

Hamilton was also having communication issues with his engineer Riccardo Adami which Fred Vasseur noted as an issue. Then they made a strategic blunder when the rain hit late in the race, as the rain spell was misjudged and Ferrari went from a potential one-two, to finishing P8 and P10. 

Whilst it was assumed that it was going to be a slow start for Hamilton due to having limited testing time and joining up so late, due to the obligations he had left to do with Mercedes, no one expected it for it to be quite this bad. However, it’s been reassured that this isn’t the real pace of the Ferrari’s with Vasseur metioning FP2 and Q2 saying there were signs of their real pace, I think for their sake you hope that’s the case.  

Kimi Antonelli shines as other rookies have difficult first race 

Isack Hadjar couldn’t even start his race, as he spun off during the formation lap. Ollie Bearman had two major crashes in both practice sessions, which set Hass back further, but luckily for him he at least managed to finish his race, whereas Jack Doohan he was out within the first lap as he had too much on the throttle and lost it on the rears. It was the same for Gabriel Bortoleto.  

However Kimi Antonelli drove a stellar race. Antonelli qualified in p16, but finished P4, which was a heck of a recovery drive. Throughout all the chaos and weather trouble, he got the strongest start to what is a big season for him, to prove what he can bring to Mercedes. For those other rookies though, the pressure is already on.