A capacity crowd descended on Albert Park, Melbourne hosting its first Australian Grand Prix in 1,100 days. After action-packed free practice and qualifying sessions, they were treated to another thrilling show on Sunday afternoon.
Driver of The Day Leclerc kept his rival Verstappen at bay through two Safety Cars – the first when team mate Carlos Sainz spun out from P14 on Lap 2, and the second on Lap 23 after Sebastian Vettel’s crash. The threat dissolved on Lap 39 when Verstappen stopped with his engine on fire, allowing the Ferrari driver to cruise to victory over Perez with fastest lap to boot.
Russell took P3 having pitted during the caution for Vettel’s crash, Hamilton losing out on another podium by two seconds in P4 – Mercedes however outscoring Red Bull to retain P2 in the constructors’ standings.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc took the first Australian Grand Prix pole position since 2019 with a blistering performance at Albert Park – with Max Verstappen lining up second on the grid for Sunday’s race and Sergio Perez a provisional third.
Just five kilometres away from the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where the late, great Shane Warne enthralled a hundred thousand on any given weekend, Albert Park hosted a sell-out crowd for the first Australian Grand Prix since 2019 – hoping to witness enough twists and turns worthy of a ‘Warney’ bowling spell.
For round three of the championship, we had Charles Leclerc lining up on pole for Ferrari against two Red Bulls – Max Verstappen from P2 and Sergio Perez from P3 – while teammate Carlos Sainz was ninth on the grid. Lando Norris lined up P4 for McLaren ahead of the Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton in P5 and George Russell P6.
Sainz, Fernando Alonso (from P10), Kevin Magnussen (P16), Sebastian Vettel (P17), Lance Stroll (P19) and Alex Albon (P20) would be the only five to start on hards, the others beginning on mediums.
With track temperatures rising past 40 degrees Celsius, the lights went out. Verstappen suffered a millisecond of wheelspin, allowing Leclerc to retain the lead into Turn 1, while Hamilton swept into third at Perez’s expense – and Russell into fourth in front of Norris.
Sainz’s qualifying misery was compounded on Lap 2 – the Spaniard having dropped down to P14 on his hard tyres – where he tried to pass Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu around the outside of Turn 9 and spun into the following corner’s gravel to trigger a Virtual Safety Car that evolved into a Safety Car.
At the very front, Verstappen suffered a lock-up into the right-hand Turn 11 on Lap 12, and suffered graining on his left-front tyre. Leclerc was then told to go long on his medium tyres, one-stop strategy still at play. The call to box came on Lap 19 – Verstappen coming in for a set of hard tyres and emerging seventh.
Meanwhile, Hamilton’s pace on mediums had taken a turn and now Perez was under pressure from the seven-time champ. The Mexican was called in to box at the start of Lap 21, as was Norris. Leclerc, however, still hadn’t pitted – and Verstappen was on the charge in P5. The Monegasque driver finally came in on Lap 23 and was ahead of the reigning champion, although the gap between the two had been halved from 8s to 4s.
The race restarted a second time on Lap 27, the whole field on hards, but Leclerc’s start was glacial out of the final corner with Verstappen almost alongside into Turn 1. The Ferrari crucially held on to the lead, but not by much, allowing Russell to attack the Red Bull – but the top three was unchanged as the hard tyres warmed into their window.
Alonso was now the lead car in a train from P4-P9 – Perez, Hamilton, Magnussen then the McLarens behind. On Lap 30, Perez calmly pried P4 off the Alpine going into Turn 4, Hamilton next to take a place off Alonso one lap later with DRS. Magnussen aspired to follow suit but made a mistake coming out of the final corner on Lap 33 and lost out to the McLaren of Norris, Ricciardo sweeping by two laps later.
On Lap 39 came the answer to that question when Verstappen peeled off at Turn 2 and launched the steering wheel out of his smoking RB18 as he gestured marshals to put the fire out. The VSC was Race Control’s answer to the Dutchman’s bad luck – a second DNF in three races.
Leclerc would cruise to victory from then on, the margin totalling to more than 20 seconds – with fastest lap giving him another point.
Charles Leclerc leads the drivers’ championship with 71 points to George Russell’s 37 going into April 24’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix – while Max Verstappen’s two DNFs leave him on 24 points behind Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton.
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