Rivals Peg McLaren the Favorites, as F1 Gears Up for Opener in Melbourne

Yahoo

13-03-2025

opens its much anticipated 2025 campaign Saturday night midnight (ET) in Melbourne.
Many are anticipating reigning Constructors' champions McLaren to pick up where they left off in 2024,
On whether he was the favorite, McLaren driver Oscar Piastri said: 'I don't know, we'll see."
Rival teams are pointing to McLaren as favorites for 2025 as Formula 1's new campaign springs to life in this weekend in Australia.
It will be the first time that Melbourne's Albert Park Street Circuit has hosted the opening round of the season since 2019, and there is a renewed energy at a season starting in a favored location among the paddock, rather than the sometimes sterile surroundings of Bahrain.
Teams are still understanding their new cars, half the grid are forging fresh relationships in new surroundings—none more so prominently than Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari—while there are five rookies, including 18-year-old Kimi Antonelli, and a half-rookie in Liam Lawson.
The weather forecast is also suggesting that there will be an additional curveball, with qualifying on Saturday set to take place in very hot conditions, before rain sweeps through the area for Sunday's race.
Many are anticipating reigning Constructors' champions McLaren to pick up where they left off in 2024, judging by the performance shown during preseason testing.
'I know we are not the quickest at the moment,' said reigning four-time World Champion Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing.
Verstappen's sentiments were echoed by new teammate Lawson, who is the only driver on the grid with no prior experience of Albert Park.
'In preseason, you don't really get the clearest of indications, but we know McLaren are strong – probably stronger than us at the moment, but we won't truly know until qualifying.'
Mercedes' George Russell also outlined that 'we know McLaren are the favorites,' pointing to their end of 2024 form and testing pace.
It is impossible to walk around Melbourne and not be struck by the presence of local boy Oscar Piastri, who is entering his third season in Formula 1 with McLaren.
Piastri's face adorns billboards, trams and murals in the city, while he has even teamed up with a fast food chain to produce his own branded burger for the week.
On whether he was the favorite, Piastri said: 'I don't know, we'll see. I know what you want me to say and everyone's headline can be that. No one really knows what to expect, testing went pretty well, but you don't know where everyone sits.
'We're pretty happy with how our test went, but Melbourne's completely different to Bahrain, the weather will be different every hour by the looks of things, but we expect to be somewhere at the front, whether that's right at the pointy end we'll wait until Saturday.'
Lando Norris, second in the F1 Drivers' Championship last year, was also reluctant to fully accept the tag of favorite.
'I know there's a lot of expectation, and it's what everyone says,' Norris said. 'Really it was my one race run I did [during testing], kind of just made everyone believe this quite heavily. It was a good race run, but it was also in the most perfect conditions. Oscar did a race run the next day that was a lot slower, not because he drove worse, but simply because the conditions on the final day were considerably slower.
'I'm quite surprised so many people are short-sighted, especially people you wouldn't expect to be, making so many conclusions before we've even started the season.
'Everyone just wants to play that game of looking like the underdog and playing it down. We just focus on ourselves. It's nice that so many people are thinking about us and talking about us, great publicity for us so I thank all of them.
'There are many things that other people didn't see where other people looked extremely strong, including Red Bull, including Mercedes, including Ferrari, and I know how much fuel and stuff Ferrari had for a lot of the testing. You'd be surprised at how quick they're going to be this weekend. People can talk all they want. I think for us, we've kept to ourselves, we've kept focused.
"We want to be quick, we expect to be up there fighting, but I definitely don't think by the margin that everyone is saying.'