Australian Grand Prix: ‘No Lewis Hamilton fairytale as Lando Norris and McLaren deliver on potential’
Hamilton of Ferrari is his personal pursuit of success, and his internal battle with Leclerc – one of the main narratives that started the season.
Another is whether Norris ambitiously able to never compete in the season’s championship challenge, rather than having to catch up – he had to try to do this last year because McLaren didn’t start at Red Bull’s level.
Finally, in Melbourne, McLaren does reach its potential, but not without a few terrible moments.
Facing the challenge of Red Bull and Max Verstappen than they expected (and the four-time champion himself) was that Norris and Oscar Piastri both made the first lap in the final part of the qualifying round.
This puts them under pressure from the last step – a lack of competitive first lap always makes it much harder to find the right balance of risks and rewards in the most important final lap, because the punishment for making mistakes is much greater.
It’s bad enough for the family’s favorite Piastri – he was fourth after the first run. Norris, however, was tenth because his lap speed exceeded the track limit.
Both absolutely nailed it. Piastri hopes to be the first Australian to win his home Grand Prix in F1 and has a second improvement to knock Verstappen out of the top, while Norris performed better, allowing his teammates to beat his teammates in 0.084 seconds.
Norris said. “It’s a track you have to commit to. You know what your goal is, and once you turn in, you want to get the best in many cases. You want to take these risks.
“Obviously, I spent too much on the first lap and got track limits, so I knew how much risk I wanted to take. But I put it together. It was just a clean lap, no mistakes, and that was enough. So happy. A perfect way to start the season.”
