Where McLaren has the edge over Red Bull and Mercedes at F1 Australian GP
We crunch the numbers and explain where McLaren’s massive Australia advantage comes from
McLaren’s scintillating performance in the Australian Grand Prix qualifying cemented its status as the 2025 Formula 1 title favourites.
Last year’s runner-up Lando Norris took pole position for the Woking-based team on Saturday, beating his teammate Oscar Piastri by 0.084s in Q3 on Saturday.
But more worrying was the gap between Norris and third-placed Max Verstappen, who qualified 0.385s off the pace in the lead Red Bull. Mercedes ended up almost a second adrift, while Ferrari faced an even bigger deficit in a tough qualifying session for the Scuderia.
While McLaren was always expected to be the team to beat at the start of the 2025 season, the MCL39 was actually not the quickest car in all sections of the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne.
Driver | Sector 1 | Sector 2 | Sector 3 | Total time |
Lando Norris | 25.961 | 16.997 | 32.138 | 1m15.096s |
Oscar Piastri | 26.082 | 16.952 | 32.146 | 1m15.180s |
Max Verstappen | 26.066 | 16.915 | 32.500 | 1m15.481s |
George Russell | 26.163 | 16.951 | 32.432 | 1m15.546s |
Yuki Tsunoda | 26.190 | 17.005 | 32.475 | 1m15.670s |
In sector 1, Norris’ advantage over Verstappen’s Red Bull was a little more than a tenth of a second. The Briton was only able to reach a top speed of 288.5km/h, while Verstappen was able to cross 290km/h in the RB21.
This straightline speed advantage continued to benefit Verstappen in sector 2 and the Dutchman was actually the fastest driver in the middle portion of the track. Between turns 6 and 9, Verstappen was able to gain 0.082s over Norris, who was also slower than Piastri and Mercedes’ George Russell around this part of the circuit.
Incredibly, this meant that there was very little to separate Norris and Verstappen based on their aggregate times from sectors 1 and 2. The McLaren driver was just 0.023s clear approaching the tricky Turns 9 and 10, which mark the start of section 3.
This was where Red Bull’s pace completely dropped off a cliff. Verstappen clocked a time of 32.500 in the final sector, which was significantly down on Norris’ class-leading 32.138s effort.
In fact, nearly all of Verstappen’s four-tenth deficit came from sector 3. This suggests that Norris was able to keep his tyres alive until the end of the lap, while Verstappen struggled in this area.
Russell’s case at Mercedes is also interesting, but for different reasons. The Briton only set his personal best time in sector 2, where he was still four hundreds of a second down on pacesetter Verstappen.
His optimum time - based on his fastest individual sectors from three different laps - would be a 1m15.352s, which would have actually placed him third on the grid, ahead of Verstappen.
Russell didn’t have any particularly major moments on his final flying lap, nor did he complain of any technical issues. It means that he simply didn’t manage to keep the tyres in the right window for each of the three sectors, all of which have their own unique characteristics.
One driver who did put together a perfect lap though was Racing Bulls’ Yuki Tsunoda, who set personal best times in all three sectors to qualify fifth on the grid. In fact, the Japanese driver ended up just a tenth adrift of Russell, showing he was able to extract maximum performance out of his VCARB 02.
