Lando Norris claims pole in the Australian GP qualifying and continues where he left last year. However, he is followed closely by two of his fierce competitors this year. There were no major incidents or red flags, but there was certainly fierce competition on track.

Let’s dive into the thrills and excitement of the first qualifying session of the Formula 1 2025 season.

Qualifying 1 full of Surprises

The first part of qualifying in the Australian GP ended with Lando Norris heading the time sheets. We lose 5 drivers during the first 2 sessions. The 5 drivers who were eliminated in the Q1 session are.

Ollie Bearman’s miserable first race continued, but this time it was no fault of his own. His gearbox wouldn’t shift, which invariably led to him not even registering for a lap for the Q1 session. Esteban Ocon was not far ahead qualifying 19th on the grid.

Source: PlanetF1

The Red Bull team’s 2nd seat curse continues with Liam Lawson having a hard time on track ending up 18th. It is no surprise that Nico Hulkenberg in Kick Sauber qualifying low down in 17th, but Kimi Antonelli finishing 16th is not something anyone expected. He was peeped by a few milliseconds by Gabriel Bortoleto.

Qualifying 2 Sees Another 5 Drivers Bite the Dust

Lando Norris once again topped the Q2 session. Lewis Hamilton had a massive spin which compromised a lot of drivers on their run. Again, in this session, we lost 5 more drivers with the top 10 heading to the final part of the Australian Grand Prix qualifying.

Gabriel Bortoleto after his heroics in Q1 unfortunately had a scary moment in Q2, which compromised his lap and he will start from 15^th on the grid. Jack Doohan in the Alpine finished in 14th while Lance Stroll will start tomorrow’s race in 13th just below his teammate.

Fernando Alonso had shown some glimpses in Q1, but he couldn’t get it together in Q2. He ended up in 12th. Issac Hadjar got the bragging rights amongst the rookies ending up in 11th place.

Lando Norris Claims Pole in Q3

Lando Norris has led every qualifying session on Saturday. He will start on pole in the Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix on Sunday. He is followed by his teammate Oscar Piastri who missed the pole by less than a tenth of a second. After a bad first run in the Q3, both the McLaren boys got their act together and will start from the front row tomorrow.

Max Verstappen finished 3rd and will be lurking behind them in the race. George Russell will start 4th and it’ll be interesting to see how he races Max tomorrow.

Yuki Tsunoda surprised everyone by finishing the session in 5^th. This is a tight slap to Red Bull who once again chose a rookie driver over him to race alongside Max.  Alex Albon finished 6th out qualifying another teammate on Saturday.

Ferrari had a bad day with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finishing 7th and 8th respectively. The final row of the top 10 will be occupied by Pierre Gasly and Carlos Sainz.

The race tomorrow is going to be quite exciting with a 95% chance of rain forecast. However, we may also get a dry Sunday, as per the changing conditions in Australia, which we have seen previously in the F1 calendar.  Tune in tomorrow to see what happens in the ra