Release the sand!
George Russell did an almost adequate job of hiding his great pleasure in confirming the paddock’s worst kept secret: that, actually, the Mercedes car is quite fast.
The championship favourite topped every qualifying segment on his way to a dominant pole position. His only real challenger was his haphazard teammate, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who briefly pipped him for provisional pole.
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A final belter, comprising three purple sectors, rocketed Russell back to top spot by 0.293 seconds.
His margin over the next-best car — Isack Hadjar’s Red Bull Racing machine — was an alarming 0.785 seconds.
There was never really any competition.
“It felt very good, to be honest,” he said. “Just how I wanted to start this weekend, really.
“We thought as a team we had a really good package beneath us, and it’s been so much hard work from everyone in Brixworth and Brackley to deliver this, but I don’t think we quite thought it was that good.”
The biggest gap between the two top qualifying teams last year, for reference, was 0.521 seconds. The average margin was 0.201 seconds.
Russell denied there had been any sandbagging — the act of deliberately looking slow to hustle the opposition — taking place during pre-season testing and into practice in Melbourne.
“I think it was more a case of some of the other teams showing more than we would have expected in winter testing,” he argued.
Lewis Hamilton wondered aloud whether Mercedes’s sudden improvement was down to the compression ratio loophole the team has been exploiting.
“Hopefully it’s just pure power and we’ve got to do a better job,” he said. “But if it is the compression thing, then I will be disappointed that the FIA would allow that to be the case that it’s not to the book, and I’ll be pushing my team to do the same thing so we can get more power from our engine.”
The loophole will be closed in June, but by then, Hamilton reckons, any hope of beating Mercedes to the title will be lost.
“If they have a few months of that, then the season’s done,” he said. “Seven races, a few months, you lose a lot of points with a second behind.”
Of course this is only round one, and everyone expects significant evolution in the competitive order. Of course Mercedes must still grapple with the compression ratio clampdown in June. Of course this is just qualifying, and Russell still has to convert in the grand prix.
But on Saturday night the paddock’s biggest worry about the state of F1’s competitiveness was realised.
For Russell, the path to his maiden world championship has suddenly opened up.
Russell takes pole for Melbourne GP | 01:55
WHAT HAPPENED TO McLAREN?
Oscar Piastri was quietly optimistic on Friday night after practice topping practice that McLaren could be in the pole mix.
“Yesterday probably painted an overly optimistic picture for us,” he admitted after qualifying 24 hours later.
Piastri led the way for McLaren in fifth, 0.862 seconds off the pace.
“Our thoughts on the picture have been that everyone was pretty close. Then Mercedes jumped ahead and the rest of us were pretty close.
“I think for me the biggest thing was we didn’t seem to gain very much — I certainly didn’t seem to gain very much — through qualifying. I don’t know if that was car or driver.
“Certainly the way you have to try and go faster is complex. Clearly the way you naturally want to go faster doesn’t work, but maybe there needs to be more restraint or looked into more.
“After FP3 by far the biggest thing was straight-line speed. I think that’s clearly something we need to understand.”
Comparing Piastri and Russell’s fastest laps shows the gap was amplified down all the straights. The difference was particularly pronounced down the back straight, where the Mercedes was as much as 30 kilometres per hour faster.
Rumours dating back to last year placed Mercedes at the head of the pack. Those rumours, however centred on engine performance — and McLaren uses the same power unit.
It suggests Mercedes hasn’t stolen a march just on engine performance but also aerodynamically.
Norris said the two were interlinked given the complexity of the new hybrid motor.
“The thing is now, to a certain extent, the more straight-line speed you have, the earlier you can lift,” he explained. “The earlier you lift, the more power you’ve got, the more you can stay on throttle.
“Also, when you go quick around the corner, you can roll quickly around the corner, you spend more time off throttle, still be quick out the corner and you have more battery.
“The better the car is, the better you can use the battery and the bigger that gap is going to be.
“It’s not like their car is one second ahead; the car is probably three or four tenths better, and then the engine works three or four tenths better as well.”
McLaren is experiencing the disadvantage of not having its own power unit.
“You have to understand how to [us the power unit], he said. “Mercedes have obviously understood that … because they’re a good team and it’s also their own engine.
“They’ve understood more than we have. We’ll get there. It just takes a bit of time.”
Team boss Andrea Stella took the optimistic position, saying that Mercedes proved there was lap time available to McLaren if it could master the power unit.
“It’s partly good news, because it means that there’s a lot of lap time available if you give the right input from a driving point of view and you do the right exploitation from a control systems point of view and programming,” he said. “There’s a lot of lap time available.”
“It took qualifying — it took everyone being in the same condition on track, same power unit, to actually have enough of a reference to understand what is possible.”
“Being a customer team doesn’t put you certainly on the front foot. This doesn’t have to do with the hardware; this has more to do with learning about the hardware and identifying the best way to exploit it.”
It’s worth noting, for example, that Pierre Gasly’s fastest lap, despite being almost two seconds slower than Russell’s, showed almost nothing separating the two on top speed down the back straight.
After one race it looks like Mercedes has an all-round advantage, but McLaren could still be closest — and much closer than it looked in qualifying — if it can get its approach right.
Max CRASHES OUT in Q1 to start 2026 | 01:23
NEW CARS PANNED IN QUALI FLOP
With qualifying complete, we finally have our first real look at how the 2026 car performs.
The response among the drivers is almost universal, and it isn’t positive.
“For me it’s not a surprise,” Verstappen said after weeks of slating the regulations. “I’m definitely not having fun at all with these cars.”
Despite being less than four seconds slower than last year’s pole — within the normal band for a rules change — the fundamentals of qualifying have changed.
Albert Park’s fastest corners — turn 6 and the turn 9-10 chicane — have had their challenge eviscerated.
That’s because much of the engine power is redirected to charge the battery through the quick corners, meaning the drivers are approaching them well within the grip limit. This is happening because 0.1 seconds sacrificed in a fast corner can pay greater dividends when deployed down the straights as extra battery power.
When this is happening — ‘super clipping’ in F1 parlance — the car is effectively operating with 150 kilowatts rather than its maximum 750 kilowatts.
It’s not just automatic engine processes either. Drivers are having to constantly manage their speed to ensure the battery is always within the right window of charge to complete the fastest lap — that is, fast overall, not fast from corner to corner.
Asked if the new car was is fun to drive, Piastri replied pointedly: “It’s different.”
“I think everyone can see the state of things. I think it will probably improve a bit, but there are clearly some fundamental things that won’t be very easy to fix, and I don’t really know what we do about that.
“I think for me the understanding of things is okay — I feel like I know more or less what I can do, what I can’t do — it’s just that, in an ideal world, would you be doing the things that we can and can’t do? Probably not.”
Norris was more direct.
“We’ve come from the best cars ever made in Formula 1 and the nicest to drive to probably the worst,” he said.
“I think everyone knows what the issues are. It’s just the fact it’s a 50-50 split [between combustion and electrical energy]. It just doesn’t work.
“The fact you decelerate so much before corners, you have to lift everywhere to make sure the [battery] pack’s at the top — if the pack’s too high, you’re also screwed — it’s just difficult. But it’s what we have.
“It doesn’t feel good as a driver, but I’m sure George is smiling, so it doesn’t really matter in the end of the day. You’ve just got to maximise what you get given.”
Asked if the cars had any redeeming features, he replied: “Not really, no.”
Hamilton Avoids 300km/h Disaster! | 00:45
Hamilton said he liked the cars but that the engines were anti-F1.
“The power’s good when you’ve got it, it’s just it doesn’t last,” said the seven-time champion. “It’s completely against what Formula 1 is about — flat out, full attack, and we’re lifted and coasting and stuff.
“That element is not very good, and I don’t think the drivers particularly like it.”
Carlos Sainz was on the same wavelength.
“It’s clear that so far no one is happy,” he said. “The only thing we feel is there seems to be a lot of plasters on top of another to try and solve the fundamental issue — that I think this 50-50 hybrid system is giving us a lot of headaches.”
Drivers reportedly engaged in a lively debate at the Friday night briefing about the regulations, but realistically there’s little that can be done to improve the situation. The engine formula is due to run until 2031, and while some tinkering can be done — for example, by giving drivers less electrical power, thereby making a fully charged battery last longer but at the expense of speed — the fundamental elements of it are fixed.
That said, it’s worth remembering a couple of things.
The first is that the situation will improve with time, as teams better understand how to get the most from their power units, which themselves will be developed from year to year.
The second is that Albert Park ranks among the worst circuits for energy harvesting — for keeping the battery charged. Other tracks will be far less critical. Some will require very little change to top up the battery.
But there’s no escaping that the drivers feel they’ve lost something fundamental with these rule changes. They, after all, are the one in the car, putting on the show.
Their complaints must be taken seriously.
HADJAR BREAKS RED BULL CURSE
Isack Hadjar is occupying the most dangerous seat in Formula 1, but the young Frenchman has excelled at his first test, qualifying third as the best non-Mercedes driver at Albert Park.
It puts him well ahead of teammate Max Verstappen on the grid, the Dutchman having crashed out of Q1 without a time.
That combination of events ended some remarkably long droughts.
Hadjar is the first Red Bull Racing driver to qualify inside the top 10 on their debut since Verstappen’s Spanish Grand Prix maiden in 2016.
Third on the grid is the best starting position for the second Red Bull Racing car since Sergio Pérez lined up second at the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix, 588 days ago.
It’s also the first time Verstappen has been outqualified by his teammate since the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, some 539 days ago
“Honestly, it was a very chill session,” a highly relaxed Hadjar said, looking comfortable in the post-qualifying top three press conference. “There was no drama for me.
“It’s the first time, I think, in my small F1 career that lap after lap I found lap time, even on used tyres, so I was just building up to it.
Piastri fastest in P2 at Austalian GP | 00:51
“It’s the first time in my career it’s that easy to put a car in the top 10, so then it makes the whole process a lot easier. You build up to it the way you want, you can allow yourself some mistakes.
“In terms of pressure, it wasn’t very high, and that was good.”
It’s a sort of truism that it’s easier to move up the grid because everything about a top car is better than a midfield one. Hadjar certainly seems to be revelling in that reality.
It would also strongly suggest that this Red Bull Racing car is less capricious to drive for anyone without the name Verstappen.
There is of course the asterisk that Verstappen could presumably have driven the car faster than Hadjar, something Russell awkwardly alluded to after qualifying.
“We know how incredible a driver Max is as well,” he said. “I’m sure Isack’s done an amazing job to be in this position. Who knows where Max would have been?”
The history doesn’t end with Hadjar.
Verstappen will line up 20th, his lowest ever grand prix starting position, after locking his rear axle inexplicably into the first turn on his first attempt at a flying lap.
“I’ve never experienced that in my whole life,” he said. “I have no idea where it comes from.”
The team said it would need further analysis, but links were quickly being drawn to the regenerative brakes feeding the new power unit and whether they were overeagerly attempting to charge the battery.
It would be just one more reason for Verstappen to dislike the new formula — though he’s far from the only one unhappy with the regulations after qualifying.
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