MELBOURNE, Australia — Lando Norris delivered one of the best displays of his Formula One career in Australia on Sunday, winning the season-opening race and proving he is more than ready for a championship bid.
Norris faced question after question through the winter about his tag as the championship favorite, as anointed by the bookmakers. McLaren’s impressive showing in preseason testing followed by its front-row lockout at Albert Park on Saturday only justified such status.
But Sunday’s race threw a lot of factors which could have derailed Norris. It was a world away from the dry, straightforward pole-to-win performances in the Netherlands, Singapore and Abu Dhabi last year where he faultlessly saw the car home.
Rain coming and going, an aborted start, three safety car periods and the pressure of Max Verstappen — the reigning world champion and one of the greatest ever in the wet — all asked serious questions of Norris at the very front.
And to every single one, he had an answer.
The safety car leads Norris on track during the Grand Prix in Melbourne (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
Norris described it as a race where it was “so easy to make a mistake, so easy to ruin everything” at any moment. Six crashes through the race proved precisely that. Heavy rain all day dampened the track for the start, yet Norris was able to soak up the pressure posed by Verstappen and McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri and remain in control. Verstappen’s tires faded as the track dried out, leaving Norris only with Piastri, the home favorite, to worry about.
The safety car for Fernando Alonso’s crash defused what could have been an awkward moment surrounding team orders, with Piastri already being told once to hold position, and it gave both drivers the chance to move onto slick tires in the pits. Norris was warned on the radio there was a short, sharp rain shower coming in the closing stages that could force another stop.
Norris had been here before. At Montreal and Silverstone last year, he twice saw victory slip away due to a shift in the weather that McLaren had misread, opening the door for his rivals. “We worked a lot over the winter to prepare for a race like this, because it’s where we threw away a lot of opportunities last season,” Norris said.
This time, McLaren nailed the call. As soon as Norris slid wide at Turn 12 and through the gravel trap — “being first, you take the risks of, ‘How much do I push it?’” — followed moments later by Piastri, McLaren made the call to come in.
“Today we were very, very decisive, calling to box five meters before I boxed,” Norris said. “It was the right call in the end, and that won us the race.” Piastri was less fortunate, spinning out at the final corner and getting stuck in the grass, breaking the hearts of tens of thousands of Australians around the circuit.
Such decisiveness to pit Norris points to the growth of a McLaren team that, en route to its first constructors’ title since 1998, did let a few opportunities slip away last year. As with any burgeoning sporting force, it had to learn how to become championship calibre. Painful parts in the process were inevitable. Zak Brown, the CEO of McLaren Racing, likes to tell his staff that it’s OK to make a mistake, just don’t make the same mistake twice. Adopting that mentality shone through on Sunday.
Norris explained how communication had been a key focus point, leading to almost too much discussion with his race engineer, Will Joseph, through the race. “I was having a storytime with Will on the radio,” Norris joked. “We were talking so much, I might as well just left my radio open for the whole race.”
Norris also proved he’s learned the lessons of last year and come back stronger as a result. He struggled through some of his early battles with Verstappen, taking his time to learn how to race against the Dutchman. In high-pressure moments, there were small mistakes that proved costly. The mistake at Interlagos last year, where Norris went off in the rain at a late-race restart while Verstappen charged through from 17th on the grid to victory, painted a stark picture of the difference between the two.
So when Verstappen lined up behind Norris for the last six-lap sprint to the restart, his intermediate tires two laps fresher and the track still damp from the rain shower, it would always be a test of how Norris could handle the pressure and see home the win. After spotting in the data that Norris was starting to drive a little bit differently, Joseph came on the radio and, in Norris’s words, “told me just to chill out a little bit.” The pace was in the car. He just had to avoid any errors. Verstappen got DRS for the final couple of laps, but couldn’t get close enough to try a move, crossing the line 0.8 seconds behind at the flag.
“That situation was new for me,” Norris said. “I’ve never led a race with five laps to go with Max behind me trying to put me under pressure and in these conditions. Maybe Max has had that a few times, he’s raced against Lewis a lot and he can just deal with that probably better than I can.
“It was a new situation for me, so it was kind of like: see how it goes when I get there. So (I’m) happy that I just got through it and stayed calm. I’m pretty sure I improved on that from last year.”
Norris held off Verstappen during a dramatic opening race of the season (Clive Rose/Getty Images)
Although Verstappen was able to stick with Norris and Piastri in the wet, McLaren’s surge clear as the track dried pointed to its true advantage. The MCL39 car is gentler on its tires than its predecessor, helping secure the 1-2 in qualifying on Saturday. Come the race, as Verstappen struggled with tires that were “f—ed,” first making a mistake at Turn 11 and then losing lots of time, McLaren just kept pulling ahead. The gap before the safety car bunched the field was over 15 seconds.
Verstappen made reference to McLaren’s advantage after the race, admitting he finished one place higher than he deserved. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who struggled to eighth place, was blown away by the pace of the papaya cars.
“They were incredibly quick today,” Leclerc said. “To be completely honest, I knew that they are incredibly quick because I’ve heard they are incredibly quick. But my engineer didn’t even tell me the lap times of the McLaren. I think they were too far ahead.”
Inevitably, the ‘favorite’ tag came up again in the post-race news conference, drawing a smile from Norris and a pat on the leg from George Russell, who’d finished third for Mercedes and commented earlier in the week that McLaren was so far ahead, it could already turn focus to its 2026 car.
“If you do relax in that position, you fail, because in Formula One, if you start thinking things are good and groovy, that’s when you start to get caught,” Norris said. “We know we have a lot of work to do.”
He suggested a few more races were needed to draw any firm conclusions on the team’s advantage, but admitted: “We are the favorites, we are the team to beat, mainly because we have two drivers up there pushing one another.”
Verstappen yielded tellingly little about McLaren’s advantage: “We’ll try our best.” Sensing a chance to poke fun, Russell added: “They look pretty good and groovy at the moment.”
This time 12 months ago, this was a race that Norris and McLaren may have lost. Not this time. It’s the surest sign yet they have come back stronger than ever for 2025, and that Norris is now ready to properly launch a championship bid.
(Top Photo: Clive Rose/Getty Images)
