Formula 1’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix revealed which teams may live up to pre-season expectations and, more interestingly, which are in worse shape.
From the best the weekend had to offer to the car weaknesses, team issues and driver mistakes that left others on the back foot already, here’s everything we learned in Melbourne.
No shortcut for Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari debut was underwhelming, and so was Ferrari’s entire grand prix weekend - one in which Hamilton finally realised the extent of the challenge ahead of him.
Beyond the fourth row start for both cars and Hamilton only scoring a single point, this was the first real chance to compare him to Charles Leclerc.
Hamilton migrated towards Leclerc’s style of lifting and braking earlier to roll a higher minimum speed through the corner through the practice sessions - and by qualifying was within a couple of tenths of a second of his pace.
That was solid, even with the caveat that Leclerc didn’t finish a second run in Q3.
It was encouraging that Hamilton has adjusted his driving, something he didn't do at Mercedes, and was even a little bit quicker than Leclerc in places.
But Hamilton admitted he thought he’d be able to shortcut his learning process with all the effort he and the team have put in, and has realised that is not the case.
It took a long time to build confidence in the car and he said he was barely scratching the surface of what car changes could or should be made in the time-pressured race weekend setting.
Then his first ever experience of a Ferrari in the wet coming in the grand prix made that a "crash course".
Hamilton was accidentally squeezed by Leclerc at Turn 1 at the start, which dropped him back behind Alex Albon's Williams, which he had jumped off the line, and he spent most of the race stuck there in the tricky conditions.
Ferrari’s strategic misstep, opting to stay out longer than others when the rain came, then made both drivers' lives even harder than they already were.
The team left Melbourne clinging to a strong conviction that qualifying and the race didn’t reflect the real pecking order.
But the best thing that can be said of Hamilton’s debut is it was a very useful learning experience.
McLaren and Norris have banished ghosts
For all McLaren’s success in 2024, it left too many opportunities on the table. But the Melbourne race suggested many of those tough lessons had been learned and the ghosts of past mistakes have been banished.
Yes, the car is the class of the field and that always helps. But this race presented opportunities to fall into the same traps that tripped McLaren up last year.
Firstly, McLaren’s use of team orders was, at times, muddy last year. Whether or not you agree they were necessary, the instruction Oscar Piastri was given to hold position when he was threatening Norris’s Melbourne lead was at least emphatic.
Once the concerns about the looming backmarkers and the changing weather had been allayed, so too was the instruction that they were free to race again.
Secondly, McLaren showed vulnerability last year in rain-hit races when it came to strategy calls. This time, it was ready.
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When the rain came on lap 44, both Norris and Piastri ploughed through the gravel at Turn 12. But the instruction had already been given to pit once the track became more wet, with Norris having the presence of mind amid gathering the car up and not being passed by Verstappen to dive into the pits.
Provided such clear decision making continues, McLaren can win consistently.
The team that's got it badly wrong
There was a crisis team in Melbourne after all - and Haas was totally blindsided by its struggles.
It was miserably uncompetitive in Australia, and detached from the rest of the midfield.
This was a complete shock to the team, which didn’t have an answer.
Nothing about the high-speed struggles it suffered in particular had been apparent in testing, and the fixes it tried to introduce through the weekend just resulted in problems elsewhere.
Haas seemed to add more wing to the car to compensate for its lack of downforce and cornering speed relative to others - only to then have a big straightline speed deficit.
The only moderate upside was that rookie Ollie Bearman had a trouble-free grand prix after a very poor weekend including a big crash in FP1 that meant he missed FP2, and a silly spin into the gravel on his first flying lap in FP3.
Had Bearman been on-track throughout, it might have given Haas a better steer on its weaknesses, but the main problem ran deeper.
Either it made a huge misstep in its baseline set-up and couldn’t recover, or there is a worrying aerodynamic weakness in this car that needs to be understood quickly.
Verstappen's a threat without fastest car (again)
The Red Bull RB21 is not at the level of the McLaren MCL39. Yet Max Verstappen regularly managed to be a thorn in the side of F1’s fastest team.
There he was, top of the timesheets after the first runs in qualifying after both McLaren drivers made mistakes on their attempts. While that situation was reversed on the final runs, he was still third fastest – even if he was almost four-tenths down.
With the worst of the car’s balance vices solved, Verstappen said after qualifying he was happy with the feel, just not the pace.
He then capitalised on Oscar Piastri’s Turn 2 wobble to leap to second on the first lap, running between the Mclarens before a rare error meant he dropped to third.
And although McLaren’s pace advantage meant he was then dropped, he capitalised on the safety cars to threaten Norris in the final couple of laps. It’s not impossible he could have won the race.
Verstappen disabused any notions that he might be demotivated by Red Bull’s struggles, and laid down a marker indicating he will be a factor in the championship fight.
'Worst car' turnaround explained
There was a clear ‘worst’ car in every public and private ranking of the teams from testing: nobody seemed to have high hopes for Sauber.
But then its real cars showed up in Melbourne, with a new front wing and sidepods, and it went on to score more points than Ferrari and more points than Sauber had managed in all of 2024…
Nico Hulkenberg’s seventh place owed a lot to the conditions. Sauber showed very un-Sauber sharpness when it called Hulkenberg to pit for intermediates when the rain came in the final part of the race.
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This team’s not had a great strategic record of late, but this was a very good, decisive action.
But also, while the car Sauber had in testing did look slow and difficult to drive - the upgraded version that is actually racing in 2025 is not as problematic.
It has a little bit more downforce, and better ride quality and handling, due to the developments and the lessons learned from testing.
Nobody at Sauber’s pretending this is a top-10 car on pure merit, and it may not even be quite as potent as it even ended 2024. Hulkenberg did also wonder if the track layout and conditions of Melbourne may have helped, though.
But it’s competitive enough to be in the mix on its day.
Lawson looked worryingly Perez-like
Liam Lawson’s debut Red Bull weekend was a copy-and-paste of predecessor Sergio Perez’s low points. He’d have dreamed of a strong start to his Red Bull career, but what he got was a nightmare.
In Lawson’s defence, he was the only driver on the grid never to have raced at Albert Park before, was running a different front wing/nose specification to Verstappen and his FP3 was ruined by an air intake problem.
But even so, he struggled badly for pace and confidence.
Two off-track excursions led to his Q1 elimination, with Lawson attributing that to a combination of the tough circuit, reduced track time and his own stupidity.
In difficult conditions in the race, Lawson made little progress and crashed out at Turn 1 while trying to survive on slicks when the rain returned late on.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner searched for a positive, offering the fact Lawson set the second-fastest lap of the grand prix.
But given that was when the track was at its driest, after he’d built tyre temperature thanks to getting a wave-around under the safety car, that really was clutching at straws.
F1's most improved team
Williams appeared to be F1’s most improved team during pre-season testing in Bahrain, and a strong opening weekend confirmed that status.
Albon qualified sixth, just 0.854s off Norris’s pole position time. His lap was 1.414s quicker than he managed in Australia last year – and likely he would have been at the front of the midfield pack but for Racing Bulls driver Yuki Tsunoda getting a tow on his final attempt.
Last year, Williams was struggling with an off the pace, overweight car early in a season that turned into a crash-strewn nightmare.
This time, not only is the car quick, but Albon also converted it into fifth place in the race. Aside from Carlos Sainz crashing under safety car conditions, the consequence of a “a big torque kick from a poor upshift” it was a dream weekend for Williams.
Albon described the midfield battle as a “dogfight” and he doesn’t expect Williams always to lead the way.
He expects the next race in China to be a struggle given the number of long corners at the track that might show up the car’s aerodynamic sensitivity, particularly if it’s windy.
But with 10 points already on the board – 59% of what it scored in all of last year – it proves Williams is a force to be reckoned with in the battle for fifth this year.
Rookies deserve a break
Finishing fourth from 16th on the grid to become the youngest driver ever to score points on his debut, in a rain-hit race, doing a 360-degree spin on the way, makes Kimi Antonelli’s much anticipated F1 debut look like a real thrill ride.
It wasn’t quite so heroic as it looks on paper, as obviously the result was hugely assisted by Mercedes perfectly judging the timing of the switch to intermediates when the rain came.
But Antonelli looked quick and confident all weekend, and it was a big boost to start his career with a big result, and stave off any early scrutiny about how ready he is at such a young age.
Other first-time starters didn’t have such fortune - even though they, like Antonelli, showed some encouraging sparks.
Isack Hadjar undid all his good Friday and Saturday work by shunting on the formation lap, while Gabriel Bortoleto battled a race-long brake issue before a race-ending spin and crash after comparing well to Hulkenberg all event in the Sauber.
This was a very tricky situation in which to step into F1, and they deserve a break - especially after showing some genuine high points.
Doohan's best can cover his worst
The last thing Jack Doohan needed given the looming presence of Alpine reserve and threat to his seat Franco Colapinto was to crash on the first lap of the race.
But setting that rookie error aside, the 22-year-old put a lot of credit in the bank with his eye-catching pace in practice and qualifying.
It wasn’t immediately obvious from the timesheets, but Doohan’s underlying speed was much the same as Pierre Gasly’s.
The three-quarters-of-a-second deficit to his team-mate was down to his final run being ruined by yellow flags, as prior to their intervention on his Q2 lap he was within hundredths of Gasly’s time.
The accident was a negative, but as Doohan himself said after the race, he showed he had strong pace.
If Doohan can maintain that level of form and continue to match Gasly then that would make it impossible for Alpine to replace him on the basis of performance.
Team principal Oliver Oakes finally admitted after the race that Alpine has caused the noise around Doohan by hiring a reserve like Colapinto - but praised Doohan for a brilliant weekend in terms of speed.
Now Doohan needs to carry that momentum into the next race in China and beyond. If he can avoid a repeat of his lap-one error, he could rack up some strong results to consolidate his position in the coming races.
