Lando Norris storms to pole in Australia

The Briton stole pole away from home-favourite Oscar Piastri in the dying seconds of Q3, with the McLaren drivers locking out the front row in Albert Park.

The final part of qualifying didn’t go all their own way, with Norris’ first lap deleted for track limits, with Piastri having a trip into the grass. But the pace of the McLaren was evident, enabling them to out-qualify defending champion Verstappen, who will start P3, by 0.3 seconds.

Meanwhile, out of nowhere, Tsunoda dragged his Racing Bulls machine all the way up into 5th, just ahead of Albon in the Williams. After preseason testing, I didn’t think the RB had much in terms of pace, but his performance today has instantly dispelled that narrative. This was backed up by his rookie teammate, Isack Hadjar, who will start 11th, having missed out on Q3 by a couple hundredths. As for Williams, they are much better than last year. Albon slotted into P6, with Sainz qualifying 10th. Yes, Carlos would’ve preferred to have been higher up in the session, but considering it’s his first qualifying with the team, it is an extremely impressive effort to push the car as hard as he did.

A team left with a sour taste after Saturday will be Ferrari. Any pace that they had on Friday, especially with Leclerc, completed disappeared. Their qualifying was scrappy, particularly from Hamilton on his Ferrari debut, finding the gravel and spinning towards the end of Q2. They will start tomorrow from 7th and 8th, a result which they wouldn’t have been expecting at the start of the weekend.  

Moving down the order, we reach the Aston Martin duo in 12th and 13th. Separated by a tenth of a second, Alonso and Stroll clearly extracted the maximum from their package, but this result highlights that the British squad are off the pace compared to their ambitious targets for the season.

As for the rookies, Jack Doohan and Gabriel Bortoleto impressed. Doohan showed strong pace all weekend and looked good for making it into Q3 until yellows for Hamilton’s spin scuppered any chance of improving. He may be starting several rows back from his teammate Gasly, who’s 9th, but his pace has matched him all weekend. As for the Brazilian, Bortoleto performed tremendously to make it Q2, out-qualifying his vastly experienced teammate, Hulkenberg, on his first attempt. The Kick Sauber does look slow, which makes the Q2 appearance all the more impressive for the rookie.

However, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the rookies. Kimi Antonelli qualified in 16th after damaging his floor when running into the gravel, which according to Mercedes was losing him 3 tenths in a straight line. As for Liam Lawson, starting 18th on his Red Bull debut is disastrous, especially with Verstappen 3rd and Tsunoda 5th. He missed large parts of running in FP3 due to technical issues, but he will be extremely disappointed with how the weekend has gone so far.

As for Haas…they were slow. I have both of them in my fantasy team, expecting decent pace, but I was unfortunately mistaken. Ocon qualified down in P19, with Bearman not even setting a lap due to gearbox issues. He has had an extremely poor weekend so far, crashing the car in FP1, missing FP2 due to the damage and then this morning he was back in the gravel in FP3. Not the start to his full-time F1 career he would’ve been dreaming of.

But tomorrow is a new day and it could be extremely interesting for the rookies. Rain is almost a guarantee, with the forecast looking favourable for ducks. It’ll be interesting to see how they adapt to the wet conditions, as well as how it will impact the race at the sharp end of the field. The rain may somewhat stifle the pace of the McLaren, bringing in other contenders such as Verstappen and Russell who start on the second row, as well as Tsunoda and the Ferrari’s.

If you are getting up at 4am tomorrow morning to watch the race live, I have a lot of respect for you. But I value my sleep and so I will be watching the race on catchup, several hours later! Either way, qualifying has setup what should be an entertaining race, especially if the weather has an impact on proceedings.