Hamilton of Ferrari – his personal quest for success and his internal match against Leclair, is one of the dominant stories at the beginning of this season.
The other is whether Norris can deliver his ambitions to get the title challenges off during the season, rather than making a catch-up. I had to try to do it last year because McLaren didn’t start at the Red Bull level.
In the end, in Melbourne, McLaren realized their potential, but not without some horrifying moments.
Faced with tougher challenges from Red Bull and Max Verstappen, the four-time champions themselves had expected – Norris and Oscar Piastri made a mistake on the first lap in the final part of the qualifying round.
That puts them under pressure on their final run – lack of competitive first straps means that the penalty for making mistakes is so great that you can always find the right balance between the risk and reward of that important final lap.
For the family’s favorite Piastri, this was bad enough – he was fourth after his first run. However, Norris was in 10th and removed the lap to exceed the track limit.
Both absolutely nailed it. Piastri wanted to be the first Australian to win the home grand prize in Formula 1, improving in 2 seconds, knocking Verstappen from the top, Norris got even better and piping his teammates in 0.084 seconds.
Norris said. “It’s a track you have to commit to. You know what your target is, and when you submit, it’s like you want the best in many cases. You want to take those risks.
“Obviously, I took too much on the first lap and got the track limit, so I was in a difficult position to know how much risk I wanted to take. But I put it together well. It was just a pretty rap and definitely that was it.
