Melbourne’s Albert Park hosted the F1 season opener, and what a race to start the 2025 season! A proper rollercoaster, with the weather playing a massive part. One minute it was spitting, the next it was dry as a bone, throwing everyone’s plans out of the window. There was even a clip of Zak Brown, head of McLaren, having to check the old fashion way by putting his hand outside to check if it was raining. With state-of-the-art technology at his fingertips, he still felt the need to just check for himself.
Lando Norris drove a blinder for McLaren. He kept his cool when Max Verstappen was breathing down his neck for large parts of the race and fair play, he bagged a cracking win. In these tough conditions, to even finish the race with the car still working was an achievement so to win was a great feat.
The weather, well, it was a real menace. Cars were sliding all over the place, a few went for a spin – and the safety car was out more than a copper at a crime scene. It was proper nail-biting stuff, with teams gambling on tyre changes and some coming up trumps, while others were left kicking themselves.
Young Kimi Antonelli, making his F1 debut for Mercedes, really showed what he was made of. He was mixing it with the big boys and, even with that kerfuffle over the penalties, getting fourth place was a stonking result for his first go.
Poor old Lewis Hamilton, though, his first race for Ferrari did not go to plan. He was struggling with the car setup, especially with the patchy rain, and ended up finishing tenth. A bit of a baptism of fire, you could say.
The whole race was a proper ding-dong battle, with cars swapping places left, right and centre. The crowd were on their feet, cheering their lungs out and you could not have predicted the winner until the very end. It has set things up nicely for the rest of the season, with McLaren and Mercedes looking like they will be giving Red Bull a run for their money.