McLaren’s pace was already impressive during pre-season testing before the 2025 Formula 1 season began. They had shown flashes of dominance and many considered them favorites heading into the Australian Grand Prix.
They’ve now delivered a commanding performance in Melbourne, with Lando Norris securing a victory and the team showing pace that left competitors stunned, while rookies like Kimi Antonelli impressed and Alex Albon delivered a surprise result for Williams.
After the race, The Athletic’s Michael Bailey and senior F1 writer Luke Smith hosted a live room with subscribers to debrief the race. In this transcript, they took questions and broke down the season-opening Australian GP and what it means for the championship battle ahead.
This partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. Look for future live rooms during F1 grand prix weekends all season on The Athletic’s app.
Luke: It’s been a really cool day. Just a great race, so much to get stuck into. One of those season openings that I think is going to live long in the memory for all of the right reasons.
Michael: I was trying to pull together a list of the things we could talk about, and there’s a lot to squeeze in. First of all, as an opening race, you kind of touched on it there. It was great to have the first race of the season back in Australia, because that’s how it always used to be. And having somewhere that can deliver such an unpredictable race is just such a great starting point for a season.
Luke: Melbourne tends to produce these kinds of crazy races where the littlest of errors can lead to a lot of ramifications, not only for the driver involved, but for everybody else. And I think we saw that on a handful of occasions today. So yeah, really nice to have Melbourne back as the opener. It was the first time we’ve actually raced in Melbourne as the first race since 2019, and it delivered in every single regard this weekend.
Michael: I guess we have to start with McLaren. I don’t know what struck you most, Luke, but certainly in the period of the race where it was dry, their pace was frightening, I thought. That all got lost because we had safety cars and everything bunched up again. And we have to talk about Lando Norris as well because of how much he dealt with. That was, for me, probably the most impressive thing about his performance. What did you make of the papaya cars?
Luke: They were honestly terrific today. Right throughout this winter, we’ve been talking about McLaren as being the favorites. We’ve been talking about their pace through pre-season testing suggesting they’d be the car to beat here in Melbourne. When that was put to Lando Norris on Thursday, he called it short-sighted, and yet it’s proven to be precisely true, as is always the case with these things.
In the early stage of the race, Max Verstappen was really able to stay with Norris at the very front. He was able to keep Piastri at bay as well. In that phase, the Red Bull and the McLaren did look quite even. I think a lot of that you can just put down to the sheer brilliance of Max Verstappen in those damp conditions. But then as things dried out, I think we did see the McLaren really come into its own.
A big thing they worked on with the MCL39 for this year was to make it more gentle on its tires, to be able to manage the tire temperatures a bit more. The moment the track dried out and the intermediates started to get chewed through a little bit more, Norris and Piastri were able to absolutely pull away so quickly. Verstappen made that mistake at Turn 11, gave a colorful description of his tire condition on the radio, and then he slipped 15 seconds back in a very short space of time. That really just sums up how much he was struggling.
This was a big flex by McLaren today. I think they’re going to try to downplay this. But paddock consensus is they are the team to beat. Leclerc, I spoke to him after the race and he said that his engineer didn’t even bother telling him how quick the McLarens were because they were so far ahead. I think that kind of sums it up.
Michael: Oscar Piastri is a really interesting one, Luke, because he was also having a good race. We went from him putting Lando under real pressure and the team having to reel him in a bit because they didn’t want him to muck up the strategy, but then he made a mistake. There were gasps across the whole track at that, because of course he’s basically a Melbourne boy. But then he recovered to pick up a couple of points. Some of those overtakes were fantastic, especially the last one on Lewis Hamilton to grab ninth. So I’m thinking, “What a shame about the mistake,” but also I do love watching him race.
Luke: The way Oscar explained it after the race was that he had one bad lap in the entire race, and it just happened to be one with that painful picture of him stuck in the grass.
Piastri is OFF and Norris pits!
The rain is coming down and Piastri now gets back on track! ☔️#F1 #AusGP pic.twitter.com/4TWZdi22lZ
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 16, 2025
A stone’s throw from where I am right now is where he grew up. He could hear the sound of the cars in Albert Park from his back garden when he was a kid. So this race means a lot to him.
I think so many people this weekend were dreaming, “Could he even win the race?” I went for breakfast this morning in the cafe nearby, and the newspaper had Oscar on the front cover. Even if he had gotten on the podium, that would have been the first time an Australian driver had finished on the podium at the Australian Grand Prix in Formula One.
And for a while it was like it was all sewn up, like was the case of, well, is he actually going to fight Lando for the victory? Are they going to ask for some team orders or whatever? And it’s just one moment that can throw everything away. And you do have to feel for him because it was a mistake that Lando Norris made, Max Verstappen made and it is so, so easy just to get things that little bit wrong. You do have to feel for him because that was a great drive and it was just one bad lap. Not even one bad lap — it was like two bad corners that ended up costing him a great result today.
Michael: Manuel asks, “So, that Ferrari radio…” Now, I have to say, it was quite compelling listening. Lewis seemed relatively calm about it after the race, but that was quite an entertaining/difficult watch in terms of Lewis Hamilton dealing with that Ferrari in those conditions for his first race with the team.
Luke: Yeah, it was. I spent a lot of the race watching Lewis Hamilton’s onboard and listening to his radio. We were always going to expect this kind of learning curve when he’s moved to a new team. It was obvious that was going to happen. But even he admitted after the race he didn’t think it would be quite this tough for the first one.
There is that massive caveat that in the wet it’s obviously going to perform quite differently than in the dry. He said that he found it quite snappy and struggled to keep it out of the wall for a lot of the time.
Speaking to him after the race, he was quite upbeat for a guy who’d just finished in 10th. It strikes a different tone from how he was through much of last year. I remember in Vegas when he finished second and he was so miserable because he hadn’t won the race. It’s just interesting how his mentality and demeanor have changed so much with this move, and he really does seem quite invigorated.
On the radio calls, yeah, some of it was a little bit excruciating. Ferrari’s radio contact has sometimes become a bit of a meme over the years. And this race didn’t help. The Charles Leclerc comment about the water he felt in his seat and his engineer being like, “Oh, that must be water…”
Michael: (laughs)
Luke: It’s just, again, absolute Hall of Fame stuff.
The first race is always going to be tough. The fact that it threw so much at them, I think actually will help in the long run … So yeah, a tough start for Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari. We’ve spoken so much about this move and how exciting it is. But after the race, he was pretty optimistic, all things considered.
Michael: You’ve hinted at it, but Red Bull, through Max’s brilliance, could have won if they had pitted sooner. McLaren were quick on the dry tires, but maybe not quick enough to overtake Max on this tricky circuit themselves. Did Red Bull make a mistake there or not do something quite right?
Luke: For Red Bull, this was always a race that never really felt within their grasp, to be honest with you. They’re probably going to look back on this with, “Yeah, if we’d come in a lap sooner, would we have had that opportunity? Could we have grabbed that win away?”
But Red Bull was happy to take that risk because they knew they weren’t winning it on outright pace. Max Verstappen was fantastic in the damp, but he’s been very honest all weekend about the fact that the car simply isn’t as quick as McLaren right now. It’s not the quickest car.
Look at last year — at the opening race, Max won at a canter, leading home Sergio Perez to finish ahead of him. We thought, “OK, well that’s the season done.” And it completely changed as the year went on. I would anticipate a similar kind of thing this year. It’s too early to write them off, and I don’t think they’ll see this as an opportunity lost today. I think they’ll just say they’re very happy with P2. “A solid start,” was how Christian Horner described it after the race.
Michael: I guess with the mitigation that that was pretty poor from Liam Lawson alongside Max.
Luke: Yeah, it’s a tough start for Liam, definitely. I was talking up his chances this week, for example, and I’m impressed by him. But this week he maybe seemed to want it a little bit too much. It’s only race one, so we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves or anything like that. But for Liam, that was a pretty rough weekend.
Liam Lawson did not have the smoothest weekend (Bearne / XPB Images / action press/Sipa USA)
Michael: Go on then, let’s wrap it up. What was your biggest shock?
Luke: I’m going to give it to Alex Albon and Williams just for delivering on the pace that has been suggested and hinted at through testing when we saw Carlos Sainz setting the fastest time overall. Then as practice and the weekend wore on, Williams kept staying up there, and there’s only so many times you can say ‘Well, they’re probably running the car light, or those engine modes or whatever.’ It gets to the point where you think, ‘You know, this might be genuine.’
Sainz then crashes out early in the difficult conditions in the race, and you think, “Well, it’s all on Albon now.” But then he put in just such a foot-perfect drive. That is not a team that is going to be scoring top five finishes on a regular basis this year, let’s be very honest about that. But he really delivered.
I just think that Alex, who has faced so much pressure throughout his F1 career, results like today really just show he is a top, top quality driver. He’s so, so good. He kept Lewis Hamilton in the Ferrari behind him for the majority of the first half of the race, got everything together when he needed to, when it mattered, when that late rain shower came.
I spoke briefly to Alex’s manager after the race and he was absolutely lit up across his face. He was getting on FaceTime to talk to some people and things like that. You just really feel a good buzz around them. So I think for Williams — I’m not saying this is going to be a sign of things to come this season — but I think for them to have got this big haul of points so early on, that’s just such a big boost for the whole team. And really well-deserved. So that will be my biggest shock of the weekend.
(Top photo: Sipa USA)
