F1 Australia Grand Prix: Date, UK start time and how to watch

McLaren locked up the front row in Melbourne for Sunday’s F1 Australian Grand Prix, having dominated its rivals, including Red Bull, Mercedes, and Ferrari — whose drivers, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, will start from seventh and eighth on the grid.

Lando Norris set a searing final qualifying lap to secure pole position, his first at Melbourne’s Albert Park, and milestone 10th overall, in front of his team-mate Oscar Piastri, and a record Saturday crowd of 136,347 at Albert Park.

“Not a bad way to start the year, thanks everyone,” Norris said on his team radio shortly after the qualifying session ended ahead of Sunday’s opening race of the Formula 1 season.

Norris went into Q3 on the back foot after his first lap was deleted for a track limit infringement at turn four, where he put all four wheels off the track. But he delivered when it mattered with his one run.

“It’s a tough one, because you want to take a lot of risks, especially on this track,” Norris said. “It’s a track where you’ve got to commit and you’ve got to know you know what your target is and once you’ve turned in, you’re kind of hoping for the best in a lot of cases.

“Obviously I took too many of my first (Q3) lap and got track limits, so I was in a difficult position with knowing how much risk I wanted to take, but I put it together well.”

And the Brit is confident he can maintain that form in the race.

“I think we were decent in Bahrain, and I think we’re going to be pretty good here,” Norris said. “We were pretty good here last year and that was with a much worse car, so we’re going in with one target clearly, which is to have two cars at the top.”

Day-long rain is in the forecast on Sunday.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen qualified third, shrugging off pre-season pace concerns for the team about its RB21 car. But he downplayed his chances of challenging the McLarens in the 58-lap race on a day when his new teammate Liam Lawson qualified well down in 18th, following a scrappy Q1 lap that questioned the team’s decision to replace Mexican Sergio Perez for 2025.