Key events
So, the top ten as it stands as they prepare to head out for one, last flying lap: Verstappen, Russell, Leclerc, Piastri, Albon, Tsunoda, Hamilton, Gasly, Sainz, and Norris.
Verstappen’s time, notably, was slower than his fastest in Q2 but still good enough to go pole. Most drivers, in fact, were slower in their opening flying laps, with Russell and Leclerc exceptions. Track getting slower?
Piastri is pushing hard on his first flying lap but his aggression comes back to bite him in the final turns. And then Lando Norris gets his lap time deleted! Wow!
Charles Leclerc goes pole, then he’s replaced by George Russell and then Max Verstappen leaps ahead!
Bit happening.
Some beautiful shots of Lakeside Stadium on the broadcast across this weekend, the home of Tottenham Hotspur boss Ange Postecoglou’s boyhood club South Melbourne.
The NPLM Victoria side have an annual road trip that coincides with setting up Albert Park for the F1, heading to Melbourne’s southeast tonight to take on the Dandenong Thunder.
Q3 Starts
The shootout is on! In 12 minutes, we’ll know who is on pole for tommorow’s race.
End of Q2
The McLarens are once again fastest and despite his spin out, Hamilton is through to Q3.
Gabriel Bortoleto in his Sauber, the Alpine of Jack Doohan, the Aston Martins of Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso, and Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar are all out.
Alonso has come back out there and is trying to get out of the bottom five… but he can’t! He goes 12th and will have his qualifying end in Q2.
Lews Hamilton has spun out in the middle of the track! He’s going to have to make do with his lap time and a great number of the drivers will have had their lap times compromised as yellow flags came out.
Oh my lord Bortoleto. The rookie looks like he’s about to crash out at speed but does an incredible job to save things and stay on track. His lap time is ruined but that could have been a lot worse.
Doohan’s previous time was wiped out, so the Australian will have to nail own final lap if he’s going to pull off an unlikely appearance in Q3.
Were Ferrari keeping something in reserve for qualifying? It doesn’t look like it right now as both Leclerc and Hamilton look a clear level below the pace of the frontrunners.
Every driver has now been out there and set a lap bar Alonso, who looks to be done already. Piastri’s 1:15.468 is the quickest while Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar, the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll, Gabriel Bortoleto in his Sauber, Jack Doohan and Alonso are in the drop zone.
Alonso appears to have gone off and dome some damage to the underside of his car in his attempts to set a lap. His qualifying is likely done.
Piastri has now set the fastest time, going 0.088 quicker than Verstappen and showing off the speed of that McLaren.
Fernando Alonso has pitted at the end of what was looking like a decent lap. Something to watch. Hamilton, meanwhile, is sitting down with the seventh fastest time of the nine that have been logged thus far. Might need to register something a bit quicker if he wants to be there in Q3.
The lap times are starting to come in for Q2, Verstappen going quickest with a 1:15.688 despite it not quite looking like his tyres are in complete cooperation with what he wants to do.
Q2 Starts
We are underway once more in qualifying, with the 15 remaining drivers looking to get through to Q3’s shootout.
End of Q1
Q1 is in the books, with Lando Norris setting the fastest time at 1:15.912
Bearman didn’t register a time amid further car troubles and is out, alongside Haas teammate Esteban Ocon. Liam Lawson, Nico Hulkenberg, and Kimi Antonelli join them in bowing out.
A flying lap from Gabriel Bortoleto is enough to get him out of the bottom five at the last! His flying lap in his Sauber produces a bit of a boil over, too, knocking the Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli into the bottom five and eliminating him!
Australian Jack Doohan is under a lot of pressure to hold his seat at Alpine but he’s had a good Q1, going 10th fastest.
Liam Lawson has gone off again, heading out onto the grass on the penultimate turn after his attempt at a flying lap started to go wrong. He pits and will be one of the five eliminated after Q1.
Sparks are coming from the back of Kimi Antonelli’s car – something looks to have gone wrong with his Mercedes.
Five minutes of Q1 remain. Bearman is yet to register a time and remains in pit lane, while Ocon, Lawson, Nico Hulkenberg, Pierre Gasly have the slowest four lap times.
The service road saves Liam Lawson, going off into the gravel but just able to gain traction before he hits the wall.
Manchester United owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe is on hand watching qualifying; INEOS own a stake in Mercedes. Tea lady better keep her head down.
Bearman remains in pit lane, wth the Haas’ crew trying to fix his gearbox in time to get him out there for a lap.
All the drivers have come out on softs for qualifying bar the Mercedes of George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, who are on mediums. The latter has pitted, now, perhaps to switch to softs.
The McLarens are now one-two in Q1, with Piastri setting a lap just 0.154 back of Norris.
Well… they were one-two, Verstappen has now got between them with the second-fastest time.
The big dogs are registering some lap times now. Charles Leclerc knocks Alonso off his perch and them himself is gazumped by Lando Norris. Hamilton has also completed the fourth fastest lap.
Fernando Alonso and his Aston Martin is the fastest amongst the first ten to register a lap time, going around the track in 1:16.546.
Bearman is on the radio, he’s got gearbox issues. Oh dear. After some disastrous practice sessions, it goes from bad to worse for the Brit.
The drivers look to be dead keen to get out there onto the track – a traffic jam has sprung up in pit lane. Can relate, Kings Way is a nightmare around there.
Q1 Starts
The cars are making their way onto the track, the 18 minutes are counting down, and the first qualifying session of the 2025 Melbourne Grand Prix is underway!
Oh yeah, haven’t mention it yet. You might not know but Ferrari has a new driver this season. A pretty big one, as it turns out: one Lewis Hamilton.
For those that need a reminder, here’s how qualifying will work.
Qualifying is divided into three sessions: Q1, Q2, and Q3, with the field gradually being culled through each until ten drivers battle it out in a shootout for pole.
In Q1, every driver will head out onto the track and set a time, with the slowest five to be removed and their starting places allotted based upon the fastest they set. Q2 sees a similar process take place, with the slowest five once again eliminated and judged on their best times from that session.
Finally, Q3 sees the ten fastest cars battle it out for pole position.
With only 20 sets of tyres to use throughout the weekend, there’s always a level of strategy involved in what teams roll with in qualifying, with an added dimension perhaps thrown in this weekend by the conditions in Melbourne.
Today’s it’s a hot one in Melbourne, 33 degrees Celsius (92 degrees in Freedom Units) with a relatively low humidity. Tomorrow, however, the heavens are set to open and the temperature will drop.
Will plug this a few times over the weekend as the season gets underway but, if you haven’t already, make sure you’ve read through Giles Richards’ team-by-team guide to the 2025 Formula One season.
Watch the highlights of FP3 now on our YouTube channel! ▶️
Next up is qualifying 💪#F1 #AusGP
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 15, 2025
Last year, Williams arrived in Melbourne lacking parts and with serious question marks hanging over them and ended up giving Logan Sargeant’s car to teammate Alexander Albon after they were unable to repair the damage to the latter’s car after an FP1 crash.
This time around, though, they’re crept on the grid with their speed; Carlos Sainz, newly arrived from Ferrari, sixth fastest in FP3 and Albon just one spot back.
The overarching theme of practice, however, is that it’s tight heading into qualifying.
Just 0.676 seconds separated Piastri’s fastest lap time in FP3 from tenth-placed Norris, with their existing inevitable intrigue about how close teams were keeping their cards to their chests across the session.
Especially after a strong opening day of practice, Ferrari were looking the team to beat heading into today but after not quite being able to replicate that pace this morning they’re perhaps the pre-eminent side being speculated to have held something in reserve. Notable, however, Charles Leclerc was on his radio at the end of the session complaining about oversteer.
Only Haas’ Ollie Bearman logged fewer laps than Lawson across practice, the Brit crashing out in FP1, missing out on getting out onto the track by 120 seconds in FP2 after frantic efforts to fix his car, and then just registering a couple of laps in P3 until he spun out and beached his car.
A total of 13 laps completed. Well… 13 and a half, if we’re being generous.
It wasn’t all that better for his teammate Esteban Ocon, either, who was the slowest of all the drivers who set a lap time in FP3.
The Red Bulls are always ones to watch – seeming to have a lock on the world champion will do that – but there’s an added dimension for this qualifying session.
After looking a bit off the pace in FP1 and FP2 on Friday, the team went to work on Verstappen’s car overnight and he found a new level of pace in his final opportunity to get some reps in, looking more comfortable and registering the third fastest time in the session.
However, after setting the 16th and 17th fastest times on the first day, Liam Lawson, was limited to just two laps in the final practice session amid problems with his power unit. How he approaches qualifying, if he’ll treat is as a makeshift FP4 or if he’ll even have a chance of getting out of Q1 if he wants to make a go of it, will be interesting to see.
Giles Richards is in Melbourne for this year’s race and his piece on the unapologetically dominant world champion Max Verstappen is well worth a read.
Born in Melbourne and growing up in the suburb of Brighton – meaning he would have been able to hear the F1 cars rolling around Albert Park from his house – Piastri logged the fastest time of any driver in FP3 earlier today, logging a time of 1:15.921.
That was 0.039 seconds clear of next best George Russell in his Mercedes, while Verstappen was 0.081 back.
The Maclaren’s widely recognised across the grid of coming into the season with some great speed, Lando Norris also looked on pace to set one of the quickest laps but ran into some traffic, holding up what was being projected as one of the quickest times.
Preamble
Hello everyone and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the first qualifying session of the 2025 Formula One World Championship season, coming your way from the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne, Australia.
My name is Joey Lynch and I’ll be taking you through all the action from Down Under as we look to see who has the pace to place themselves atop the grid for the season’s first race tomorrow.
Yet again, Max Verstappen is the hunted; the Dutchman guiding his Red Bull to a fourth world title last season to vault himself further into the pantheon of the sport’s all-time greats.
Will be the season in which the crown begins to weigh heavy on his shoulders? Or tyres, perhaps? There’s a hungry pack chasing him and eager to send a strong message in the first race of the season in Melbourne, led by local-hope Oscar Piastri in his McLaren.
Qualifying starts at 10pm PST/5am GMT/4pm AEDT.
