When the lights go out Sunday at the Australian Grand Prix to begin the 2025 Formula 1 season, defending F1 Drivers’ Champion Max Verstappen will start third, behind perhaps two of his biggest challengers in Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
The four-time champion, despite qualifying third on Saturday, is not expecting any “miracles” on Sunday.
“I don’t expect miracles, but I think it’s OK,” said Verstappen when asked about the RB21’s race pace after qualifying. “Not on the same level [as Norris and Piastri], but I’ll just do my best and see what happens tomorrow.”
Verstappen and teammate Liam Lawson seemed to be on the back foot a bit heading into Saturday’s qualifying session, as Verstappen finished FP2 down in P7. But as we have seen many times over his career the Red Bull driver put himself firmly in the mix for pole position during qualifying, topping the timing sheets at various times throughout the session.
However, when the checkered flag flew at the end, Verstappen was on the second row behind the two McLaren drivers. Still, Verstappen noted that the car “came alive a little more” on Saturday for him, a statement that might worry the rest of the field.
“We had a bit of a tough start. This has never really been a good track for us. So it took a bit of time to understand how we could improve the situation. We did that today,” said Verstappen. “Honestly, I’m quite surprised to be sitting here after yesterday. I felt confident, I felt one with the car, but clearly, we were lacking a bit of pace.
“Overall, I’m happy with the laps in qualifying. I tried to really extract everything. The tires are quite sensitive around here, with all these high-speed corners, but I’m happy to be here,” continued Verstappen.
“The car came alive a little more. Yesterday it was, in general, quite OK to drive, just too slow. Today it was a little faster. But clearly still not fast enough.
“Still, to be ahead of Ferrari and Mercedes here is good for us.”
As noted in his comments the Australian Grand Prix has not always been kind to Verstappen. Over his F1 career, he has more retirements in Australia (three) than podiums (two).
We will see if that changes on Sunday.
