Autobayng News Team
Mercedes justified the pre-season speculation that they would be the team to beat by locking out the front row of the grid for the Australian Grand Prix.
George Russell’s pole position lap was 0.785 seconds quicker than anyone else managed. However not all of Mercedes’ leading rivals had clean sessions in qualifying. Does that leave room for optimism they could be closer than they look?
Sector times
Impressively, both Mercedes drivers put their quickest three sector times together on their fastest laps. However their closest pursuers gave only a few hundredths away.
| P. | # | Driver | S1 | S2 | S3 | Ultimate lap (deficit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 63 | George Russell | 27.498 (1) | 17.284 (1) | 33.736 (1) | 1’18.518 |
| 2 | 12 | Andrea Kimi Antonelli | 27.556 (2) | 17.440 (7) | 33.815 (2) | 1’18.811 |
| 3 | 6 | Isack Hadjar | 27.747 (6) | 17.453 (8) | 34.036 (4) | 1’19.236 (+0.067) |
| 4 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | 27.679 (3) | 17.505 (10) | 34.061 (5) | 1’19.245 (+0.082) |
| 5 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | 27.737 (5) | 17.537 (11) | 33.988 (3) | 1’19.262 (+0.118) |
| 6 | 1 | Lando Norris | 27.754 (7) | 17.568 (13) | 34.077 (6) | 1’19.399 (+0.076) |
| 7 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | 27.696 (4) | 17.570 (14) | 34.152 (7) | 1’19.418 (+0.060) |
| 8 | 41 | Arvid Lindblad | 28.023 (8) | 17.312 (2) | 34.418 (11) | 1’19.753 (+0.218) |
| 9 | 30 | Liam Lawson | 28.198 (9) | 17.360 (3) | 34.352 (9) | 1’19.910 (+0.084) |
| 10 | 5 | Gabriel Bortoleto | 28.263 (10) | 17.418 (6) | 34.531 (13) | 1’20.212 (+0.009) |
| 11 | 87 | Oliver Bearman | 28.492 (14) | 17.407 (5) | 34.380 (10) | 1’20.279 (+0.032) |
| 12 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | 28.577 (16) | 17.405 (4) | 34.311 (8) | 1’20.293 (+0.010) |
| 13 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | 28.283 (11) | 17.557 (12) | 34.605 (14) | 1’20.445 (+0.056) |
| 14 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | 28.499 (15) | 17.469 (9) | 34.489 (12) | 1’20.457 (+0.034) |
| 15 | 23 | Alexander Albon | 28.292 (12) | 17.670 (16) | 34.909 (16) | 1’20.871 (+0.070) |
| 16 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | 28.489 (13) | 17.621 (15) | 34.874 (15) | 1’20.984 (+0.216) |
| 17 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | 28.797 (17) | 18.047 (19) | 35.125 (17) | 1’21.969 |
| 18 | 11 | Sergio Perez | 29.138 (18) | 17.819 (17) | 35.648 (18) | 1’22.605 |
| 19 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | 29.198 (19) | 17.949 (18) | 35.978 (19) | 1’23.125 (+0.119) |
Teams’ performance
Behind Mercedes came Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren, with little to choose between all three. Red Bull certainly suffered from Max Verstappen’s early exit from qualifying.
Isack Hadjar did a remarkable job in his first appearance for the team to claim the ‘best of the rest’ spot behind the flying W17s, but you have to assume Verstappen could have wrung more from the car. That said, Hadjar was closer to Verstappen throughout practice than many of the four-times world champion’s recent team mates.
Ferrari also did not have a smooth session as they began to experience power unit problems from Q2. However Charles Leclerc estimated this only cost them a tenth of a second or two – not the three-quarters they needed to catch Mercedes.
McLaren struggled to optimise the energy deployment in their car. Strikingly, all three Mercedes power unit customers made indifferent starts to the season, though McLaren were at least well ahead of Williams and Alpine.
Cadillac, F1’s first all-new team for 10 years, are six-tenths of a second off the next-slowest car, Aston Martin’s troubled AMR26.
Unsurprisingly, none of this year’s brand new cars are faster than their predecessors. Mercedes got closest to their 2025 pace.
The second-best team compared to their performance last year was Haas. However Haas had a particularly poor Australian Grand Prix 12 months ago as their car performed badly in high-speed corners at the time.
Field performance
Although the new generation of cars are slower than their predecessors, they compare favourably with the first cars produced for the ‘ground effect’ era. Russell’s pole position lap is only six-tenths of a second slower than the fastest time from 2022.
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Published by
Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 – when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring journalist, Keith began running the site full-time in 2010, achieving a long-held ambition to dedicate his full attention to his passion for motor racing. View all posts by Keith Collantine
