For those who populated the podium, there wasn’t a whole lot of disappointment that tinged the outcome of the 2026 Australian grand prix. But there is no hiding from the fact that what Formula 1 showed in the first race of the new season has evoked a lot of intense reaction.
Let’s start with the positives. It could not have gone any better for George Russell. The Brit showed up in Australia full of confidence and added some genuinely impressive performances to that mix. It netted him pole position by some distance and a race win that wasn’t too much of a struggle either. The start from pole can’t be checked off as perfect, but his ding-dong battle with Charles Leclerc ultimately settled, and from there, the Merc driver didn’t have too much to be concerned about. Kimi Antonelli made it a Mercedes one-two and has to be commended for an impressive comeback. He’d smashed the Mercedes to pieces in Saturday morning’s free practice but still managed to go second-fastest just a few hours later in quali. Similarly, he struggled off the start but recovered to finish second overall.
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Leclerc rocketed off the line, and the Ferrari was soon swapping P1 with Russell. And here is where some of the negatives start to rear their head. In any other F1 season, the swashbuckling fight for P1 between Russell and Leclerc would have been racing nirvana. But in 2026, it fell desperately flat. Many online fans dubbed the dice between the two as artificial, given that it wasn’t bravery on the brakes or an audacious dive down the inside that was making the moves happen. Instead, it was moves being made due to mismatched battery capacities. When one driver ran out of deployment, the other could simply drive by. No matter how much you squint, that is not racing. And this was the case up and down the field. Add to this that the viewer had no idea about a driver’s battery level, and there was no way to know if an overtake was genuine or battery-induced. It was, in a word, disgraceful. It is shameful that Formula 1 has been reduced to what is little more than a mockery of true motorsport. F1 has always been revered as the pinnacle of racing, for the skill and commitment it takes, and for the utter bravery it demands from drivers. There was none of that on display in Australia.
One down. Full focus on what lies ahead 😤 pic.twitter.com/6RC94ssCnc
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) March 9, 2026
We should add the caveat that the Albert Park circuit is an outlier and that teams had some difficulty discerning how to most effectively map the battery deployment. As such, because this weekend’s race, at the Shanghai International circuit, is taking place on a more conventional layout, teams and their engineers should be able to optimise their deployment maps more quickly and easily. It remains difficult to believe that the new regulations will improve from what was seen in Australia, but we’ll reserve final judgment for now. If the same artificial type of racing is produced in China, too, the FIA and FOM have some serious work to do, and they’ll have to do it quickly, too.
Behind the top three of Russell, Antonelli, and Leclerc was the second Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton. Some 50 seconds adrift of the race winner were Lando Norris and Max Verstappen in fifth and sixth. Norris’s McLaren teammate didn’t even make the start of the race, owing to some kind of torque spike which pitched him into a wall on the recon lap before the start of the race. Ollie Bearman was seventh for Haas and, though happy with the point-scoring position, likened the race to being in a video game. Rookie Arvid Lindblad was eighth in the Racing Bulls ahead of Gabriel Bortoleto in the Audi and Pierre Gasly in the Alpine. The sister Audi of Nico Hulkenberg failed to make the start of the start due to telemetry issues, while both Aston Martin drivers, as expected, failed to reach the chequered flag. The other retiree came in the form of Isack Hadjar, whose Red Bull PU appeared to fail.
On to China it is this weekend, with muted hope that Formula 1 produces something better than it did in Australia.
