Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari debut faces hurdles with P8 finish at Australian Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari journey had a rocky start at the Australian Grand Prix, with the seven-time F1 world champion qualifying eighth on Saturday. The British driver admitted he is still adjusting to his new team and car, acknowledging teammate Charles Leclerc’s advantage in experience.

Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari journey

“I’m building confidence and learning how to unlock the car’s potential,” Lewis said. “Tomorrow will be tough, especially as I haven’t driven this car in the wet, but we’ll give it everything.”

Melbourne’s unpredictable weather could shake up Sunday’s race, with warm conditions in the morning expected to shift to rain by midday. This could offer Lewis an opportunity to make up ground in his first race for Ferrari.

Meanwhile, McLaren’s Lando Norris put in a blistering lap to take pole position, his first at Melbourne’s Albert Park and 10th overall. Teammate Oscar Piastri secured second, making it a front-row lockout for McLaren in front of a record crowd of 136,347.

Norris went into Q3 on the back foot after his first lap was deleted for a track limit infringement at turn four, where he put all four wheels off the track. But he delivered when it mattered with his one run.

“It’s a tough one, because you want to take a lot of risks, especially on this track,” Norris said. “It’s a track where you’ve got to commit and you’ve got to know you know what your target is and once you’ve turned in, you’re kind of hoping for the best in a lot of cases.

“Obviously I took too many of my first (Q3) lap and got track limits, so I was in a difficult position with knowing how much risk I wanted to take, but I put it together well.”

And the Brit is confident he can maintain that form in the race.

“I think we were decent in Bahrain, and I think we’re going to be pretty good here," Norris said. “We were pretty good here last year and that was with a much worse car, so we’re going in with one target clearly, which is to have two cars at the top.”

Piastri was not unhappy to be second, having maximixed his lap, which enabled McLaren to lock out the front row for the second straight race, following 2024’s season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. But the Australian hasn’t given up on becoming the first Australian to win his home F1 Grand Prix.

“It would be really special to be able to achieve that,” Piastri said. “But, I’m not setting my sights too to firmly on that, we’ve got a lot of work to do (first) to try to maximize the race tomorrow – we (also) have to see what the weather does first.”