Australian Grand Prix

Starting the season in the pointsStarting the season in the points

2025 SEASON

Thrilling. Frenetic. The 2025 Formula One season opener duly delivered as Albert Park in Melbourne provided another classic Grand Prix to add to its showreel.

Facing heavy weather and a slippery track surface amplified by the rain, Fernando and Lance set off from P12 and P13, embarking on a race that provided a mixed result come the chequered flag.

Combining a strong drive with great strategy calls from our team, Lance secured a sixth place finish and eight points. Fernando, meanwhile, was unlucky to spin and touch the wall on the exit of Turn Six on lap 33, which brought his race to an end.

LanceStroll

6th

RACE POSITION

6th

DRIVER STANDING

Lance's profile

FernandoAlonso

DNF

RACE POSITION

17th

DRIVER STANDING

Fernando's profile

Australian Grand Prix race stats

Number of pitstops

16.5

Longest stint (laps)

44.5

Total laps

234.50000000000003

Total kilometres

LanceStroll

Final position

P13

Starting position

Points

FernandoAlonso

DNF

Final position

P12

Starting position

Points

Fastest lapM:S.MS

1:25.538

Lance

1:28.819

Fernando

Max speedKM/H

301.3

Lance

296.4

Fernando

Practice laps

Lance

Fernando

Qualifying laps

Lance

Fernando

Race laps

Lance

Fernando

Total laps

142

Lance

117

Fernando

Australian Grand Prix

The Debrief by Aramco

A mixed start to our 2025 season as Lance brings home a strong P6 finish in tricky conditions whilst Fernando retires from the race.

TRACK INSIGHTS

Albert Park CircuitAlbert Park Circuit

14 weeks doesn't sound so long, but the off-season can feel like a lifetime. Getting back into a race environment really gets the pulse racing – and there's no better place to do it than Melbourne's Albert Park. It’s a thrilling racetrack that always delivers drama, roared on by an enormous crowd, packed in to enjoy a four-day festival of motorsport.

Every season, the first race features tantalising unknowns – this year more than most. The super-short winter testing window doesn't provide any answers, but it strongly suggests the gaps between teams are miniscule. The first race of the year helps to establish a pecking order but it's never that straightforward.

Within the narrow, slippery confines of Albert Park there's always a sense that anything can happen. It's not a race at which teams can ease-into the season gently: everyone has to be absolutely on their game.

Turn 9-10 is one of the fastest high-speed corners on the calendar. You need maximum downforce there and a lot of front grip as well.

Jak Crawford – Aston Martin Aramco Young Driver

Toggle below to highlight parts of the track.

Sectors
Turns
DRS

Circuit length
5.278km
Number of corners
14
Race distance
306.12km

NEED TO KNOW: AUSTRALIAN GP

The essential Melbourne travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

The magic of racing in Melbourne

Mastering Albert Park Circuit

Strategy insights down under

Ultimate Australian Grand Prix facts

Our track record at Albert Park

The essential Melbourne travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

Melbourne. After a few years tucked away, starting the season here feels like a return to F1's ancestral departure point. Blue skies sometimes, lush vegetation and a sports-mad population that pack Albert Park to the rafters all weekend.

The Victorian capitol is consistently voted one of the world’s most liveable cities. It's a human-scale place, and while the tram will whisk you from the city centre out to Albert Park in a matter of minutes, if you have an hour to spare, the walk is well worth your time, particularly taking the circuitous route along the Yarra River, through the Royal Botanic Gardens.

If you're all about sport, perhaps do the detour around the 100,000-seater Melbourne Cricket Ground. Undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest sports arena, it also hosts the Australian Sports Museum. Though when F1's in town, if you want to see a match, the 'G is more likely to be resonating to the noise of Aussie Rules Football than the satisfying thunk of leather on willow.

After a day at the track, perhaps head for the coast. It's a short walk to Middle Park Beach, thereupon to enjoy cocktails with a sunset view of Port Phillip Bay and the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron Marina. Further along the Esplanade in St Kilda, there's fine dining from the ocean terrace at the Stokehouse or the slightly more… raucous… bars of Ackland Street. The race this year is on St Patrick’s Day… be prepared.

If you have a day to spare and haven’t had enough of motorsport, head to Phillip Island, home of Australia's MotoGP round. There’s an excellent History of Motorsport display featuring many of the cars and bikes that have graced the circuit, a karting replica of the full-size circuit, penguins and plenty of events to wow visitors – the weekend before the grand prix has the Phillip Island Classic Festival of Motorsport.

And if you’re in Australia for a little longer, perhaps arrive in style, having driven along the Great Ocean Road from Adelaide. It's only 240km but you'll want to take your time and spend a few days, stopping at the various towns, parks and scenic lookouts along the way.

Set sail: Click here to visit Melbourne with Regent Seven Seas Cruises that explore enchanting Australia.

The magic of racing in Melbourne

Even were it not the season-opener, the Australian Grand Prix is absolutely a bucket-list event to attend. It’s one of the truly great sporting events, and generates a huge crowd that fills Albert Park across all four days.

The Australian Grand Prix is more like a motorsports’ festival than a standalone Grand Prix, with cars on track from 09:00 until sunset most days. There's the usual F2 and F3 support series – and we have high hopes for Aston Martin Aramco Young Driver Jak Crawford in F2 this year – plus sportscar and historic racing, demonstrations and four rounds of the mighty Australian Supercars series. Every hour there's a new race, qualifying session or practice.

Best of all, most of those support series have open paddocks dotted around Albert Park. You can wander around, talk to the crews and drivers, and generally soak up the atmosphere. The F1 teams certainly do because another excellent thing about racing in Albert Park, is that most people walk into work – which isn't something you can do at most circuits. Strolling around is encouraged, as this is one of the more open-access circuits, with easy entrance to the various experiences and fan zones.

You're likely to see the most action in the grandstands (Moss, Brabham and Jones Grandstands at Turn One for first-lap drama; Hill and Ricciardo at Turn Three most likely to see overtaking) but this is one of the rare circuits where the general admission ticket really delivers – the area known as Brocky's Hill is particularly popular, with a view of the back straight.

Of course, Albert Park doesn't stop when it gets dark, and the race weekend features live music when the lights come on. Fatboy Slim closes out the weekend on Sunday night, supported by Anna Lunoe, with The Living End, Spiderbait, Tones & I and Baker Boy covering Friday and Saturday night.

Mastering Albert Park Circuit

Albert Park is a curious track: not quite street circuit; not quite permanent course, but somewhere in between. At any time of year, it would create setup headaches: for the opening race of the season, it's very tricky to get right.

Like every street circuit, at the start of the weekend, Albert Park is 'green' – the track is dirty and the grip level will be low. It evolves rapidly as the F1 cars and support series sweep clean the racing line, and lay down a coating of grippy rubber in the braking areas. This makes it difficult for race engineers to understand their new cars: are they seeing an improvement in laptime because of setup changes they've made – or are they seeing an improvement in lap time, simply because the surface is getting quicker?

The track has changed in recent years. Before the 2022 race it was resurfaced – though it still has a couple of fearsome bumps that need careful negotiation – and Turns One, Six and the penultimate corner were widened. Perhaps of greater significance, the chicane at the former T9-T10 was removed, creating a longer fast section of track, into a tighter Turn 11 (which is now Turn Nine).

The consequence of this is to make the circuit higher speed with more full-throttle time. This usually pushes teams to drop downforce and run cars with skinnier wings – but that’s not straightforward in Melbourne, as the track also features a record four DRS zones. With more of a qualifying lap completed with the DRS open and the drag taken off the car, teams can afford to run a little more wing to look after their tyres during the race.

Strategy insights down under

Last year, Pirelli decided to go a step softer with its tyre allocation and has kept those C3, C4 and C5 compounds this time around – therefore there's a strong likelihood of another two-stop Grand Prix. The Soft tyre isn't really raceable, so the expectation is a Grand Prix conducted entirely on Hard and Medium tyres. Graining on the Softer tyres is a real problem in Albert Park and, unlike some other circuits, it doesn't seem to go away after a few laps. Therefore, two Hard sets and one Medium was the popular allocation last year.

The most popular way of using those was a Medium/Hard/Hard strategy. The undercut was powerful, leading to many drivers pitting very early – including Lance who came in on lap eight. Fernando took an alternative approach and did Hard/Medium/Hard, though cut his first stint a little short, to take advantage of a Virtual Safety Car, and make up ground. The real wildcard, however was the three drivers who started the race on a Soft tyre. Hoping to use the extra grip for a very, very short opening burst, before two longer stints on Hard. They all pitted by lap seven, and none scored points.

The consequence of taking an extra Hard or Medium into the race is only having four sets of Soft tyres available for qualifying. The risks with this are much, much higher than they are later in the year, as everyone has a new car, and no one really knows what constitutes a 'safe' time to get through Q1 and Q2. Ideally, you’d want the insurance of extra runs, but that's just not possible. It's probably the most tense qualifying session of the year… which is great for fans.

Ultimate Australian Grand Prix facts

1 | An event called the Australian Grand Prix has been around since the late 1920s, though it only became a round of the F1 World Championship in 1985. That F1 race was held on a street circuit in Adelaide for its first decade, and then at its current home in Albert Park since 1996, at which point it switched from a season finale to a season opener, creating the novel situation of Australian Grands Prix being consecutive events.

2 | The grandstands in Albert Park are all named after motorsport's great and good. The one name you may not recognise is the Waite Grandstand at T9-T10. It’s named after Colonel Arthur Waite, winner of the inaugural 1928 Australian Grand Prix, originally called the 100 Mile Race. It was held on Phillip Island using public roads where the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit stands today. Born in Adelaide, Waite won the race driving an Austin 7 – an unsurprising choice given Herbert Austin was his father-in-law, and he was the company's distributor in Melbourne.

3 | There was an Aston Martin entry in that race. Ed Houn drove a car entered by G E. Goodall. Sadly, his race seems to have ended on the first lap.

4 | The non-championship Australian Grand Prix was held at Albert Park in 1953 and 1956. The latter event was won by Stirling Moss, with the race regularly attracting a top-class international field.

5 | While there were no Aston Martins on display in those years, Lex Davison did pilot a DBR4 to second place in the 1960 race, held at Lowood Airfield Circuit in Queensland.

6 | The final Australian Grand Prix to be held in Adelaide shares an unusual record. Damon Hill won the race, two laps ahead of second-placed Olivier Panis: F1's biggest winning margin. The record is shared with the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix, when Jackie Stewart had the same margin over Bruce McLaren.

7 | That race also holds F1’s attendance record: 520,000 people came to watch.

8 | For nine months of the year in Albert Park, the park roads used for the Grand Prix circuit are open to regular traffic – though some of the corners are closed-off and specific to the race track.

9 | The 2023 race holds the record for the most red flags during a Grand Prix: three.

10 | Both Lance and Fernando made their F1 debut on this circuit – albeit separated by quite a few years. Fernando took his bow in 2001 with Minardi, Lance in 2017 with Williams. Given the frequency with which Albert Park has hosted the season-opener, they're in good company: 12 of the 20 drivers have (or will) make their debut here.

Our track record at Albert Park

We made our F1 Australian Grand Prix debut in 2022 – Albert Park still being off-limits in 2021 because of the global pandemic. It wasn't the best start, with both cars qualifying towards the back. Sebastian Vettel's race ended when he spun off and into the wall at Turn Four. Lance, however made decent progress to finish 12th. He employed a novel strategy of pitting on consecutive laps behind an early Safety Car, using a Medium tyre for the one obligatory lap before running the entire race on Hards.

Our two subsequent races have had considerably better rewards, with four points finishes. In 2023, Fernando was on the podium, in third, with Lance right behind him, finishing fourth. Last year didn't quite reach those heights, but a solid sixth for Lance and eighth for Fernando, was one of our best results of the season.

Jak Crawford, meanwhile, had a tough F2 weekend last year. A qualifying crash relegated him to the back of the field, but he recovered to score a point in the Feature race and bagged another for fastest lap.

Free Practice 1

Fri 14 MAR01:30-02:30 GMT

01:30-02:30 GMT

Free Practice 2

Fri 14 MAR05:00-06:00 GMT

05:00-06:00 GMT

Free Practice 3

Sat 15 MAR01:30-02:30 GMT

01:30-02:30 GMT

Qualifying

Sat 15 MAR05:00-06:00 GMT

05:00-06:00 GMT

Race

Sun 16 MAR04:00 GMT

04:00 GMT

TALKING POINTS

Andy's Australian Grand Prix preview

Early season expectations, an ultra-competitive F1 field and Adrian Newey's first days with the team. CEO and Team Principal Andy Cowell sets the scene as the 2025 campaign kicks off in Melbourne.

READ THE INTERVIEW

Andy Cowell Talking Points 2025 Australian GP article desktop hero image

Bold and blue

The lowdown on Lance's lid

Take a closer look at Lance's Pepperstone-inspired helmet, fresh for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

DISCOVER MORE

THE STEERING COLUMN

A snapshot from life in the fast lane

Jak Crawford reveals his lofty ambitions for the F2 season, what its like to drive our new simulator, why the Australian Grand Prix is one of the best and how a trip to the Canary Islands got his heart racing.