When Lando Norris was facing the media on Thursday at Albert Park, he was in a relatively combative mood.
The early championship favorite was berating reports that were claiming McLaren clearly has the fastest car to start the year based on pre-season testing’s lap times. Norris said he was “quite surprised so many people are so short-sighted” to come to such a conclusion, and then stated Ferrari would catch a few out by being extremely quick in Melbourne.
For much of the time after he made those comments, Norris was being proven right. The Friday practice lap times – both on low fuel and high fuel – suggested Ferrari was close to McLaren, and that Mercedes wasn’t a million miles away either. Red Bull was a little more up and down, but then appeared to make a step forward in FP3 to join the party.
And as Q1 wrapped up, it definitely looked like Norris would be vindicated. 0.662s covered the top 17 cars in the first part of qualifying, and nine of the ten teams. Only Haas couldn’t make it a full house, as it is enduring a challenging weekend on Oliver Bearman’s side of the garage – the Briton failing to set a time – and ended up 1.2s off with Ocon.
Norris’ prediction looked ever-more solid as Q2 came and went and the first runs of Q3 wrapped up, but even though McLaren still held the tag of favorite for pole position it wasn’t by a major margin.
For Norris to then stick lead a front-row lock-out by the best part of 0.4s from the first non-McLaren car – Max Verstappen’s Red Bull – and over 0.7s to the lead Ferrari, was a throwback to the pre-season expectations rather than the post-practice ones.
“I expected more (from Ferrari),” Norris said. “They’ve been just as quick as us all weekend. We definitely came into qualifying expecting a fight with Ferrari, although Max was not far behind, he said he was a bit surprised to be up here. I think we expected more from Ferrari.
“People are quick to judge, ‘Oh he’s there on the timesheets, they’re slower, the car isn’t good.’ But it’s difficult out there to put a lap together. When you see how close one tenth can be it can easily be three or four positions.
“A tenth is easily within most drivers every lap, especially on a track like this. It’s about commitment, pushing that little more on the final lap, getting off the brakes, committing to corners, pushing track limits. There’s a tenth in most people. Sometimes two-tenths in taking those risks. I felt I still took a good amount of risks in the final lap to get pole.
“But I did expect Ferrari to be quicker. Whether that’s because they didn’t put good laps in or struggled more with the car, I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. We all expected Ferrari to be quicker because they have been just as quick as us all weekend. So it’s more that they just didn’t perform in qualifying for whatever reason.”
Qualifying was a pleasant surprise for Norris. Kym Illman/Getty Images
The end result of a second row of Verstappen and George Russell is enticing given their beef towards the end of last season, and then the surprise performances from Yuki Tsunoda and Alex Albon to secure fifth and sixth also went down well. But to see Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in seventh and eighth respectively was not in the script.
As much as Norris can be accused of trying to downplay McLaren’s advantage even after another example that points to it being a step ahead of its rivals, Leclerc suggests he might be right that qualifying didn’t paint an accurate picture.
“As soon as we started to push the car more and more and more, we found more and more and more inconsistency, which was a bit of a shame,” Leclerc said. “We lost a little bit of the pace throughout qualifying.
“Q1 we were good, Q2 a little bit less good, and Q3 we had to push a lot to try and make the lap time. But we didn’t really follow the track for some reason, so we’ve got to look into it, and maximize tomorrow.
“I think we’ve lost relative competitiveness compared to yesterday, which we know what we’ve changed, so we’ll have to look into it for sure. But other than that, I don’t know.
“As I’ve said many times before coming here, it’s only the first race of the season, and it’s only a starting point. It’s going to be a very long season. We’ve just got to stay calm, maximize points tomorrow, whatever that may be, and work from there.
“I think this car has a lot of potential, but for now we don’t seem to be in the right window. So we’ve got to find it.”
Leclerc was more downbeat of the two Ferrari drivers, despite Hamilton being almost 0.9s slower than Norris. For the new addition, this weekend is a constant learning curve and Hamilton has been so energized by his new challenge that he gives off the impression of relishing the opportunity to truly get stuck into tackling the hurdles ahead of him.
“It’s been a lot slower process for me to really build confidence in the car,” Hamilton admitted. “If you look at the high speed everywhere, I’ve been down all weekend. Charles just had it from the get go. From the minute he went out, he knew what the car does.
“For me, I was just building up to that through the weekend. I think I got a lot closer towards it. To be that close to Charles in my first qualifying session in the car against a great qualifier is [not bad].”
Sunday’s weather forecast could see a wet race that would usually be music to Hamilton’s ears given his starting spot, but he admits he still needs to learn so much about how his car operates ℃ including steering wheel switches in the wet – that he doesn’t see it as the same opportunity as usual.
But whether the rain arrives or not, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella expects Ferrari to still be a threat in race trim, and throughout this season.
“I am certainly surprised by the gap between McLaren and Ferrari,” Stella said. “But I would say more, I just don’t take that gap at face value.
“I am sure the potential of the red car is higher than for some reasons was possible to exploit today. I think we have seen that – until possibly qualifying – in every single session, even in Bahrain. So we are very realistic that Ferrari is definitely one of the main contenders for here, even if tomorrow we will see which condition we will be racing.”
Competitive sessions are the only moments that can provide true answers, and the first one of the season has done nothing to help McLaren shake off a clear favorite’s tag. But for all the talk of Ferrari’s potential, having Verstappen directly behind the two McLarens and a significant chance of rain for Sunday also serves up a combination to disrupt its strong start so far.
“For me the only thing I can say about Max in wet conditions is that he is mega,” Stella added. “So I think he has shown what quality he is able to express when the conditions are prohibitive, like in the wet.
“So we know that despite today we had a good result, in wet conditions Max can be a significant threat.
