Oscar Piastri has crashed on the formation lap to leave Albert Park stunned and McLaren a car short on the grid. Meanwhile, George Russell, starting on pole as Mercedes lock out the front row will look to keep focus and build on his dominant qualifying session. You can follow it all live on ESPN:
– Lando Norris: F1 cars gone from best to worst under new rules
– F1 drivers eviscerate new cars at Australian GP – what’s going wrong?
Reigning champion Lando Norris — who qualified sixth — did not hold back on his disappointment at F1’s new hybrid cars saying after Saturday’s qualifying session that “we’ve come from the best cars ever made in Formula 1 and the nicest to drive to probably the worst.”
Meanwhile, Max Verstappen starts from 20th on the grid after crashing out of Q1. Despite Verstappen’s crash, he actually took part in the session by leaving the pits, whereas both Lance Stroll and Carlos Sainz failed to make it on track at all, so he was 20th out of 22 on the final classification.
Charles Leclerc starts from fourth, while Lewis Hamilton was seventh, splitting McLaren duo Norris and Oscar Piastri.
