The 2025 Formula One season started with a bang in Australia – in fact several bangs which led to car destruction for four of this seasons rookie drivers. Under pressure are Jack Doohan who failed to complete a single lap in Melbourne before putting his car into the wall along with Liam Lawson, Red Bull’s choice to succeed Sergio Perez.
Doohan was already looking over his shoulder with the Alpine team having signed the impressive Argentinian Franco Colapinto as their reserve driver. Colapinto was given the last nine Grand Prix of 2025 with Williams when the team lost patience with US born driver Logan Sargeant.
Franco scored points in two of his first four Grand Prix and even piqued the interest of Red Bull Racing before he finished the year with three DNF’s in the final four weekends. The hope for Doohan was that he’d fair better than his Argentinian rival over the early races this season but by failing to complete lap one of the Grand Prix in Melbourne has firmly set the cross hairs targeted on the Aussies back.
Lawson poor F1 weekend in Melbourne overall
Liam Lawson has delivered stand in cameo roles for the Red Bull sister team across the last two years of F1 competition, his second was to replace paddock favourite Daniel Ricciardo who waved good bye to the sport come the end of the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix.
Yet despite his eleven Grand Prix starts, Lawson looked out of sorts in Australia and his best placed session on theme sheets was just P16 which he delivered in Friday’s first practice session. Mistakes in qualifying saw the New Zealander exit in Q1 and with Red bull making some changes to the car he would start the race from the pit lane.
Unlike Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli who charged through the field from P18 to P4, Lawson was perpetually mired at the back of the pack before he hit the barriers on lap 46 which put pay to his race weekend. As have those before him, Liam is realising how good Max Verstappen is even when in inferior machinery to his chief rivals as the RB21 looked a handful to drive throughout the Melbourne event.
Verstappen did his level best to keep the McLaren pair honest throughout the Grand Prix and was the only driver able to live with their pace in wet conditions. The RB21 punished its intermediate tyres and from around lap eight running at full pace, Max discovered his tyres were wearing more than his papaya liveried rivals.
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A combination of the rain returning and mistakes from both Norris and Piastri gave the world champion half a sniff of an unexpected win. He hounded Norris over the closing laps, although the British driver held it together and resisted all of Max’s efforts.
In his post race interviews, Verstappen revealed the McLaren’s “took off” when his tyres started to overheat and that despite his best efforts there was little he could do to match their pace.
“I think [the pace is] good compared to the teams behind us,” he said. “But if you look at the first stint, we were quite a bit off.
“As soon as the tyres started to overheat, we had no chance. McLaren just took off. So, we still have a lot of work to do to fight for a win. I’m happy that we are second here. It’s basically one place better than we should have been. And it’s 18 more points than I had last year at this race,” concluded the quadruple world champion.
RB21 upgrade as late as round 5
For the second year in a row, the F1 season is starting with back to back race weekends and with China looming just a handful of days away, there’s little Red Bull can bring to the car in Shanghai by way of upgrades. Of course there is three more hours of learning for the team from the practice sessions on Friday and Saturday as they seek to tweak the balance of the car to be kinder on its tyres.
Red Bull may not be too concerned yet though, given the evidence from Australia was that when all the teams had ditched the intermediate weather tyre, Max was competitive on the slicks.
In terms of upgrades the news is concerning for the world champion’s hopes of matching Michael Schumacher and wining five F1 drivers’ titles in a row. Red Bull has no upgrades coming to the car until air least round three in Japan and maybe not until round five in Bahrain.
Reed Bull advisor Dr. Helmut Marko said the prospect of upgrades coming soon was grim. “We hope that around the third to fifth race we will take an important step forward,” he told Sky Germany. Then when asked whether the deficiencies present with the RB21 were aerodynamic or mechanical his assessment was not one of joy and hope.
“Both,” was his swift reply. “But that cannot be solved so quickly.”
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Subdued hopes for Max in China
Whilst the F1 teams build completely new cars each year, there often remains a DNA in their concepts which means every year’s offering has similar traits. This means certain circuits favour particular cars each year but China is not one of those for Red Bull as Christian Horner notes.
“I think expectations are difficult to set ahead of China,” Horner said to Sky F1. “This track historically for us, even in our strongest days, has never played to our strengths. I think the fact that we’ve only won this race twice in 20 years shows it’s quite a tricky circuit for us.
“I think we’re looking forward to going to China and learning more about the car or about some of its limitations. The McLarens will be quick there, I’ve got no doubt about that, but it’ll be interesting to see how the balance moves around,” concluded the Red Bull boss.
Verstappen appeared genuinely delighted with second place in Australia and how close he pushed Lando Norris towards the end of the Grand Prix. This is a sign of how low Red Bull’s expectations are at present, given the usual never ending thirst for victory the world champion exudes week in and out.
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The first Formula One race weekend of the 2025 season is done and dusted and many of the tantalising questions from pre-season testing have been answered. McLaren are definitely the team to beat at this early stage of the year, while even a “horrible” Red Bull car is capable of extraordinary feats in the hands of max Verstappen.
Mercedes appears to have the edge over Ferrari, which will please Toto Wolff no end and his selection of junior driver Kimi Antonelli to replace the departing Lewis Hamilton now appears to be a masterstroke. Antonelli was the best of the rookies in Melbourne last weekend with a drive from P16 to finish less than two seconds behind his team mate in P4.
The young Italian made a daring overtake in the closing laps to pass Williams’ Alex Albon, something missed by the world feed live at the time. Only Oliver Bearman of the remaining first race of the season rookies managed to finish the rain affected race in Melbourne…. READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
