Current form
McLaren was viewed by many as the favorites who entered 2025. And while Lando Norris played this down, the squad certainly looked strong at the Australian Grand Prix of the season opening.
Norris and teammate Oscar Piatri secured a block in the front row for the race on Sunday, with Polesitter Norris master the changing weather conditions on the way to victory – which made the British the first driver as Max Verstappen to lead the World Cup since the Spanish Grand Prix from 2022.
Read more: 5 winners and 5 losers from Australia – who started your season with style?
Only days after his victory, Norris will be interested in continuing this form in Shanghai – while Piatri will hope to jump back onto the grass when the rain fell into Melbourne and fell off the order of P2 before finally saving P9.
In the meantime, Verstappen led Red Bull’s indictment in Australia to second place, a result that he defeated as a “decent starting point” for the outfit when he wanted to defend the title of his drivers.
At the top of the teams of the teams with McLaren are mercedes, the silver arrows, the P3 and P4 with George Russell or Kimi Antonelli. It was a positive start for the squad and explained Russell that they seemed “Ferrari one step ahead”.
In fact, it may not have been the first weekend as a Scuderia driver for Lewis Hamilton, and the seven-time world champion ended the day in P10, while teammate Charles Leclerc P8 took over. According to Leclerc, the Italian outfit is now “on the back foot” after its pace fights.
Elsewhere, Williams fell attention with a strong weekend in Australia. Rennbullen could not enter the promise they had previously shown, and Haas confronted with the “undesirable surprise”, on the back of the field – while some of the newcomers will prove a point in China last weekend.
With just one Grand Prix of a 24-round calendar, one thing is certain that there are still many twists that still have an exciting season ahead of them.
