Lando Norris won the first race of the 2025 Formula 1 season. (Photo by SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Lando Norris won the season-opening Australian Grand Prix from the pole position. And it was hardly a boring path to victory.
Norris somehow regained the lead in the last 15 laps of the the race as a rain shower hit the track. The race started under wet conditions with the entirety of the field on the intermediate tire. A crash by Fernando Alonso allowed teams to change to dry tires under caution. And that’s when things got wacky.
Not long after the race resumed following Alonso’s crash, the rain hit again. Norris and his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri both went off the track — and Piastri got the worst of it. As Piastri got stuck in the grass, Norris hit the pits for a set of intermediate tires.
Max Verstappen went from third to first as he stayed out on dry tires, but he was soon forced to pit again for intermediates. That cycled Lewis Hamilton to the lead in his first race for Ferrari.
But as Hamilton tip-toed around the wet track on dry tires, Norris was picking his way back through the field and got past Hamilton before Liam Lawson and Gabriel Bortoleto crashed in separate incidents. That forced another yellow flag as Norris kept the lead and Hamilton and his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc needed to pit for inters and had their strategy attempt ruined.
The 57-lap race resumed with six laps to go after the dual crashes and Norris held off Verstappen for the win.
Norris had the race in hand before Alonso’s crash as Piastri was a comfortable second. The two McLaren cars had comfortably dropped Verstappen in third and appeared well on their way to a dominating performance to back up McLaren’s 2024 constructor’s title.
Instead, Piastri finished 10th after he was finally able to get himself unstuck from the grass after spinning out and heading to pit lane for intermediate tires.
The conditions were incredibly unkind to F1’s rookies as four drivers with less than a season’s worth of experience crashed out. RB’s Isack Hadjar crashed on the formation lap when his car snapped loose in the wet and didn’t even get to start the race. Alpine’s Jack Doohan crashed on the first lap and then Carlos Sainz crashed under that caution just a few moments later in his first race from Williams after being replaced at Ferrari by Hamilton.
Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli finished the race in fourth but was classified fifth after a five-second penalty for an unsafe release on his final pit stop.
1. Lando Norris, McLaren
2. Max Verstappen, Red Bull
3. George Russell, Mercedes
4. Alex Albon, Williams
5. Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
6. Lance Stroll, Aston Martin
7. Nico Hulkenberg, Sauber
8. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
9. Oscar Piastri, McLaren
10. Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
11. Pierre Gasly, Alpine
12. Yuki Tsunoda, RB
13. Esteban Ocon, Haas
14. Ollie Bearman, Haas
Not classified: Liam Lawson (Red Bull), Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber), Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), Carlos Sainz (Williams), Jack Doohan (Alpine), Isack Hadjar (RB)
