AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX 2025
photo credit: skysports.com
WHAT A RACE!!!!!!
F1 is back in 2025 and what a beauty of a race to start of the season with. It was no doubt one of the best if not the best season openers ever. The race was filled with carnage and menace from start to end due to the ever changing conditions frequently switching from wet to dry and vice versa. The slippery conditions added to the difficulty making the driver's veer of the track ever so frequently.
At the end of the day McLaren continue with their dominant form proving once again they have the outright fastest car. The McLaren boys finished P1 and P9, with Lando winning the race for them. Up until the second shower of rain in the closing few laps of the race the Papaya boys were running P1 and P2 with a huge gap of more than 15 seconds to Max Verstappen. But alas the rain, the great equalizer made Oscar spin out on the penultimate corner and he was stuck in the grass for a few moments greatly hampering his race. The Australian curse of Australian drivers never finishing on the podium in their home grand prix continues.
It was a day to forget for most of the rookies... Isack Hadjar in the VCarb Racing Bulls car spun out on turn 2 during the formation lap before the race even started, a devastating way to start an F1 career. Jack Doohan also crashed on the opening lap further exemplifying how tricky the conditions were. During the second spurt of rain Liam Lawson tried to brave it out on the slick tires but the treacherous conditions caused him to spin out and crash into the barriers. On the same lap Gabriel Bortoleto veered off the track hitting the barriers at the penultimate corner.
Fernando Alonso, the oldest rookie of them all also could not keep it out of the barriers and found himself in them at turn 3 on lap 34.
Last year's race winner Carlos Sainz also crashed into the barrier behind the safety car at the end of lap 1. The third year in a row where the last year's race winner dnf'd in Australia. But this incident did not ruin the race for the Williams team as Alex Albon in the other Williams finished P5 amassing 10 valuable points for the team, a superb drive from him in these ever changing conditions.
Ferrari were the team in spotlight this weekend with Lewis Hamilton's first race ever with them... but it was no way near the way the want it pan out. Finishing P8 and P10 is what they were able to extract from the race due to the car lacking pure raw pace and messing up the strategy during the second burst of rain clouds over the circuit. During the period of the second rain burst, they braved it out on hard tires and somehow survived while slipping and sliding even when others were on mediums bringing them way up the field into P2 and P3, but they somehow changed their minds quite late and pitted both their drivers after everyone already having pitted. Which went against the understanding of everyone as at that instant the safety car had been deployed so they had quite less chance of losing huge amount of positions as it was the closing stage of the race. They were at the wrong tire at the right time and right tire at the wrong time... another error by the strategy department of the Scuderia Ferrari HP team.
Max Verstappen finished a comfortable P2 with no threat from behind by the Mercedes of George Russell and being no match for the McLaren of Lando even after so many safety car restarts.
The Mercedes cars sneaked in an unexpected results. Finishing P3 and P4 in the end, something which no one expected knowing the pace of that car. But they proved everyone wrong with executing their strategy with perfection which brought them up ton of places while others were messing up in some way or other due to the absolute madness of a race happening.
George Russell is always the driver capitalizing on situations like these and he did so again with snatching up that podium position due Oscar Piastri's error. Kimi Antonelli was one of the two rookies to finish the race and the only rookie to score points. Even though it was his first race, it was a superb drive by him by all standards.
Driver's like Lance Stroll and Nico Hulkenberg also capitalized due to applying the right strategy at the right time and scoring 8 and 6 points for their teams, which is a big haul for team's like Aston Martin and Kick Sauber.
The Haas team did not have pace at all and finished dead last of all runners.
In all there were 6 retirements all due to going off into the barriers.
So with that the first race of the 2025 Season is done and dusted with it giving us numerous memories and instances to remember. McLaren like the end of last year are still the fastest car and team to beat but now with a car which is even faster and more dominant.
In a week's time we head the twisty and challenging circuit of Shanghai. We'll have to wait and see who comes out on top. Also other things to look out for will be whether if the rookies can redeem themselves after a horrid Australian GP for most of them and whether Ferrari and Hamilton challenge for the top positions like anticipated.....
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