Charles Leclerc headed the first day of practice for the 2025 Formula 1 season, but even he isn’t fully at one with his new car yet.
“We did good preparation work because the feeling with the car was good,” said Leclerc after today’s practice sessions. “There’s obviously things that we need to improve, as always, and I’m not very happy with the balance yet.“But we are in a much better place compared to Bahrain testing. There’s still some performance to find but that’s the same for everybody in the paddock. These cars are pretty new for everyone and so you’ve got to push it to understand where exactly the limit is. But it’s been a solid first day and now we’ve got to wait and see how it goes tomorrow when we push a bit more.”
In 24 hours’ time we’ll know the pecking order for the first of this year’s 24 rounds. But how closely will that resemble what we saw on Friday? Leclerc admits it’s “too early to say.”
“For sure McLaren is up there. I think Red Bull might be struggling a little bit more for now, but you never know with them. Especially with Max [Verstappen], you can never really rule them out. So I’m sure they will be in the fight and Mercedes looks strong as well.”
McLaren looked strong over a multi-lap run, but Lando Norris said he found it difficult to get the best out of the car over a single flying lap. “We’ve got a good baseline but I’m certainly not happy, not confident with the car in terms of finding the best balance and being consistent enough,” he said. “Especially on low-fuel.”
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“On high fuel, I felt good,” he added. “Just low fuel, still similar to Bahrain, too many inconsistencies, too many problems, so a bit of a struggle.”
“But still, it’s the same for everyone. So we just have to make sure that we find a bit more pace. At the moment we are definitely lacking a bit to fight up front.”
Strikingly, there was no repeat of Verstappen’s complaints about his car balance which were regular occurences last year as they began to encounter problems with their RB20.
“The balance wasn’t even completely out,” he said, “no massive or major problems, but somehow the grip was not coming. I was just struggling on all four tyres, really, in sector one and the last sector. That means of course that we are not really up there at the moment.”
However from where they are at the moment it would be a surprise if Red Bull did not make a significant step forwards on Saturday. And the fight for the final places in Q3 could be incredibly close.
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Teams’ 2024 performance in context
NB. Racing Bulls was RB in 2024
What we didn’t know then was that Red Bull were about to be caught and overhauled by some of their rivals. They narrowly had the quickest car over a single lap over the full season, but were much more competitive in Melbourne than at most rounds. As the data above shows, only Ferrari got within 0.5% of Red Bull’s fastest lap time at Albert Park last year.
Conversely, McLaren were less competitive in Australia than they were over the rest of the season. The same goes, to an even greater degree, for Mercedes, Haas and above all Alpine, who were still struggling with an overweight car 12 months ago.
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Teams’ progress vs 2024
Three teams have already lapped quicker around Melbourne than they did last year. First among them, unsurprisingly given their poor showing last year, is Alpine. However given the strides they made at the end of last year, and the promise they showed in testing, were not fully reflected in 14th and 15th on the times sheets today, perhaps because Pierre Gasly often struggled with traffic.
Sauber have improved year-on-year, as have Racing Bulls, by a tiny 0.004 seconds.Red Bull is at the other extreme. Their best lap time so far is 1.1 seconds slower than they managed in 2024, while every other team is within 0.6s or better.
Are Red Bull struggling so much with their car that they may fail to improve their lap time year-on-year? It seems unlikely. Verstappen suffered a lot with traffic during his qualifying simulation run in second practice, eventually setting his best time on his sixth lap, by which time his soft rubber would have been fading. Pace-setter Charles Leclerc did his after just a single, slow preparation lap.
However one factor is likely to inhibit how easily Red Bull and their rivals can find more lap time tomorrow: The track is forecast to be significantly hotter come the qualifying hour.
Racing Bulls have already beaten their 2024 reference lap time – just – and their drivers looked immediately comfortable with their cars when they switched to soft tyres in second practice. They stood out as one of the most impressive midfield teams in practice, along with Williams.
“So if we manage to unlock some potential on soft tyres, we could be competitive. But the field is extremely tight. I saw the [Racing Bulls] cars doing some very fast laps also, a bit out of nowhere. Everyone seems honestly that if they put together a good lap, anyone can be in Q3.”
However Sainz has previously said he will need a few races to suss how to get the best out of his new car on the softest rubber, which this weekend is the C5. “I was very quick on mediums and very competitive also in FP1, and as soon as everyone turned up in FP2 and I went to find the lap time on soft I clearly struggled to find the lap time on that compound,” he said. “Tomorrow we will have four or five softs in quali and hopefully that will give me a chance to unlock it but in that sense there’s work to do.”
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Teams’ 2024 and 2025 times
All bar one of the 10 teams were covered by less than a second. The outlier is Haas, who are lagging a further six-tenths of a second, puzzled by the lack of performance from their car, the situation not helped by Oliver Bearman’s crash in first practice.
Despite being one of the teams which under-performed at this track, they are further off their 2024 pace than any team besides Red Bull. But while Red Bull appear to be holding something back, Haas seem to have had an unwelcome surprise on the first day of practice, and have just an hour of running left to figure out what’s gone wrong.
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Combined practice times
| P. | # | Driver | Team | FP1 time | FP2 time | Gap | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1’17.461 | 1’16.439 | 53 | |
| 2 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren-Mercedes | 1’17.670 | 1’16.563 | 0.124 | 50 |
| 3 | 4 | Lando Norris | McLaren-Mercedes | 1’17.252 | 1’16.580 | 0.141 | 51 |
| 4 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | Racing Bulls-Honda RBPT | 1’18.061 | 1’16.784 | 0.345 | 52 |
| 5 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 1’18.071 | 1’16.859 | 0.420 | 51 |
| 6 | 6 | Isack Hadjar | Racing Bulls-Honda RBPT | 1’17.847 | 1’17.019 | 0.580 | 55 |
| 7 | 1 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull-Honda RBPT | 1’17.696 | 1’17.063 | 0.624 | 43 |
| 8 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’18.586 | 1’17.161 | 0.722 | 42 |
| 9 | 18 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin-Mercedes | 1’18.057 | 1’17.279 | 0.840 | 48 |
| 10 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1’17.716 | 1’17.282 | 0.843 | 56 |
| 11 | 55 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | Williams-Mercedes | 1’17.401 | 1’17.302 | 0.863 | 55 |
| 12 | 23 | Alexander Albon | Williams-Mercedes | 1’17.713 | 1’17.302 | 0.863 | 46 |
| 13 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin-Mercedes | 1’17.736 | 1’17.330 | 0.891 | 50 |
| 14 | 7 | Jack Doohan | Alpine-Renault | 1’18.232 | 1’17.394 | 0.955 | 50 |
| 15 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine-Renault | 1’18.505 | 1’17.493 | 1.054 | 53 |
| 16 | 12 | Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 1’18.390 | 1’17.634 | 1.195 | 56 |
| 17 | 30 | Liam Lawson | Red Bull-Honda RBPT | 1’18.455 | 1’17.640 | 1.201 | 52 |
| 18 | 5 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’18.438 | 1’17.847 | 1.408 | 51 |
| 19 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | Haas-Ferrari | 1’19.139 | 1’18.034 | 1.595 | 47 |
| 20 | 87 | Oliver Bearman | Haas-Ferrari | 1’19.312 | 2.873 | 12 |
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2025 Australian Grand Prix
- Contact with team mate may have led to Bortoleto’s Australian GP crash
- Hamilton dismisses ‘negativity’ over his radio calls. ‘Other drivers are almost abusive’
- Antonelli “got really scared” when he made “big save” on first lap of Australian GP
- Williams explain role played by car’s systems in Sainz’s race-ending crash
- Norris is only driver besides Verstappen to win back-to-back races since 2021
PeteB (@peteb)
14th March 2025, 12:19
I think it’s largely as expected so far. Comparing them to Australia last year is interesting but we all know the order changed quite dramatically in the 2nd half of the season and based purely on FP1 & 2, the order looks very similar to how things ended last year…
McLaren and Ferrari were very quick but Ferrari struggled a bit with race pace. Red Bull were a couple of tenths off the pace over a single lap but Max tended to have decent race pace – the 2nd Red Bull was miles off the pace.. Mercedes could be quick but their car was very track/temperature specific… We’ll see if that all proves to still be the case over the rest of the weekend!
Toro Rosso’s pace is interesting but obviously it’s hard to tell based purely on practice. I haven’t seen any data to show if that’s genuine pace or whether they did a few lower fuel runs.
erikje (@erikje)
14th March 2025, 12:27
I find the Ferrari race pace really interesting.
Hamilton did the longest run of the top teams 13 laps and set his fastest time on his second to last lap which is encouraging. Leclerc set an incredible lap time on his second to last lap too.
Drivers fastest laps on their long runs.
Leclerc – 20.825 (M)
Hamilton – 21.297 (M)
Norris – 21.474 (M)
Piastri – 21.139 (M)
Verstappen 21.506 (M)
Lawson – 22.711 (M)
Russell – 21.646 (H)
Ant – 21.485 (H)
PeteB (@peteb)
14th March 2025, 13:05
Yeah it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out. Of course, there’s rain forecast for Sunday so maybe we won’t get too many answers this week.
Davethechicken
14th March 2025, 12:44
It is fascinating to compare to last year, particularly the Red Bull.
Expectation is that all teams find significant improvement in pace over a year. Often measured at 1-2 seconds.
If Red Bull were not that much quicker it would imply there car got worse last year, after Australia, which would be very odd indeed.
The logical question from that how much did the others catch up, or did Red Bull have to slow down, for some reason? Of course there was much speculation last season around braking systems that was never confirmed.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
14th March 2025, 12:23
Is the Racing Bulls laptime change shown in white? Or just too small a gain to show up on the chart?
anon
14th March 2025, 13:06
@bullfrog it is there in light blue, but it’s very difficult to see it because it’s such a small change (a difference of just 0.004s in lap time).
PeteB (@peteb)
14th March 2025, 13:06
It’s light blue which is quite hard to see but it’s also extremely small – an improvement of 0.004s. You can just about make it out if you’re on a PC…
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
14th March 2025, 13:25
@bullfrog Yes it is a tiny gain so it’s hard to see – I’ve added a sentence to clarify.
MacLeod (@macleod)
14th March 2025, 13:54
It’s very strange when your car is slower then last year if they can’t improve in FP3 use the car of last year. (Red Bull)
Davethechicken
14th March 2025, 14:12
All will be revealed. If Red Bull 2025 were not to be as fast as they were in the first 6 tracks of last years season it would look very odd.
After all, they seemed different league last year for the first 6 grand Prix, then all of a sudden 3 other teams “caught up” to them.
Bearstyle
14th March 2025, 14:37
If I remember correctly it was around the same time (6-7 races in) that FIA did a revision on their rules for brakes..? perhaps linked to the RB change of pace. Who knows. We’ll see their true pace in quali/race.
Picasso 1.9D FTW (@picasso-19d-ftw)
14th March 2025, 16:02
Is there still a seat for him, or does he have to share with this year’s Carlos Sainz?
El Pollo Loco
14th March 2025, 21:46
This is a question with very different answers depending on what tires you’re talking about whether quali or race pace. Williams is as fast the big boys on the C3, but like Mercedes, cannot turn on the C5 and gain literally almost no time (literally in Sainz’s case in FP2). And when Sainz said he wanted more time in testing he was primarily referring to their lack of understanding in getting the C5 to work.
McLaren are about equal in one lap pace to Ferrari in low drag configuration, but will they dare run that with a 65% chance of rain on Sunday? The problem for McLaren is that the low drag rear wing will also mean they’ll eat up their tires more quickly.
The Red Bull is a mess. Unless they figure it out in the sims between FP3, I wouldn’t expect any heroics from them. Mercedes may benefit from cool temps again on Sunday. So, they may end up looking more competitive than anticipated. As for the midfield, Williams is the class of the field (midfield), but RB know how to turn on their C5s and might be a bigger quali threat.