Albert Park Circuit, Sunday, 8 March

Find out what happened during the race in Melbourne, and get the thoughts of McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and Team Principal Andrea Stella.

Ultimately the season opener in Melbourne, Australia, proved to be a difficult weekend for the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team. Lando worked hard to secure a P5, holding off a resurgent Max Verstappen in the final stint, while Oscar was unable to start his home Grand Prix having crashed on his first reconnaissance laps-to-grid.

The team was able to execute a good race with Lando and gathered a lot of important data in the process. Being able to complete the race will prove critical for future learning and vehicle development. He departed from the expected one-stop strategy, taking advantage of an early VSC to successfully undercut Arvid Lindblad, when overtaking was proving difficult. He pitted on Lap 11, swapping Medium for Hard compound tyres. Despite all the expectation pre-race of energy use dominating overtaking, Lando used the more traditional tyre delta to work his way back up through the field.

The one-stop race was still possible, but having been chased down by Max Verstappen, Lando opted to swap back to the Medium tyre on Lap 34. Verstappen, on the opposite strategy, stayed out to Lap 41, and came out in Lando’s wake. The pair fought closely in the final stages of the race, playing out the game of energy chess these regulations had anticipated. Lando held firm, saw off the challenge and got the team up and running in 2026. While Red Bull may carry a slight pace advantage, being able to keep them behind was a significant achievement today, both for Lando and the team.

Today’s race pace, like yesterday’s Qualifying positions, was in line with our pre-season expectations. There is a significant gap to Mercedes and Ferrari, and we have a lot of work to do to improve the car, to add more downforce and to extract more performance from the power unit. In what promises to be a season of rapid development, we go on to Shanghai with more knowledge and the expectation of a better result.

Lando Norris

"P5 is a good result, I think we maximised what we could achieve today. The gap to the guys ahead is pretty big, and we clearly have a lot of work to do, which we thought might be the case coming into this weekend. The fact that we could defend against Max and keep him behind, even though he had a lot more pace, was positive. We managed the strategy well, protected our position, and managed the tyres well to keep him behind.

“We need to work hard to understand where we're losing pace to the front runners, as well as understanding how we can approach the weekend better, but I've got full confidence in my team to be able to do that. It's looking like it's going to be a long, tough season, but we're in a reasonable place to start from, and we'll do the best we can."

Oscar Piastri

"Disappointed. Today was not how we wanted to start the season. Unfortunately, a combination of factors, including cold tyres, being up on the kerb and then more power than I had in Quali in that corner, meant I spun. We will review everything this evening and go into next week with our heads down and ready to keep fighting. Thank you to fans for their support this weekend, it’s been amazing, and I’m sad to not have been able to race in front of them."

Andrea Stella

Team Principal

"It was certainly a shame to go into the Grand Prix with only one car. During the first reconnaissance lap, a combination of factors, including suboptimal tyre temperature, unexpected torque deployment and being up on the kerb, caused Oscar to unexpectedly spin at Turn 4 and subsequently crash into the barriers. It was a tough moment for him, especially at his home race, but he is a strong person and will regroup with the team and go to China even more motivated.

“In terms of the race itself, it was very important to finish it with Lando, to gather as much data and learning as possible under these new regulations. Lando did a great job to adapt to various scenarios and battle with Verstappen’s Red Bull. However, we finished some distance behind the leader, so it is clear we have work to do. Whilst we were on a different strategy, and we lost a bit of time in the first stint behind the Racing Bulls. We absolutely have performance that we need to find through the exploitation of the power unit and by improving grip in the corners.

“Thank you to the team in Woking and trackside, and to HPP, for their work so far. We will take what we’ve learned across all aspects of this weekend and ensure we go into China stronger.”