At the initial race start, Verstappen was passed by both George Russell and Hamilton.
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Max Verstappen won the Australian Grand Prix after battling with the Mercedes drivers, avoiding multiple Safety Cars, and avoiding three red flags to finish ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. At the initial race start, Verstappen was passed by both George Russell and Hamilton. The Safety Car then made two quick appearances as a result of Alex Albon’s severe crash and Charles Leclerc’s retirement following a collision with Lance Stroll.
“From my side, I just tried to avoid the contact, it’s quite clear on the rules what is allowed to do now on the outside, but clearly, it’s not followed. But that’s okay. We had good pace, we passed [Hamilton] anyway but it’s something for the next race to take into account,” said the Red Bull driver after the Grand Prix. “We had a very poor start and then [on] Lap 1 I was careful because I had a lot to lose, and they had a lot to win.”
The field returned to the pits after an additional red flag for Albon’s incident, with Hamilton leading Verstappen and Alonso and taking advantage of Russell and Carlos Sainz’s unfortunate decision to switch to fresh tyres just before the stoppage. Verstappen had a free choice of tyres for the restart, so Hamilton took the lead at first. However, the Red Bull driver quickly moved back into P1 and within DRS range, adding to Russell’s misery just as it seemed his engine had failed.
Verstappen overcame the early drama to take a comfortable lead as the race went on, while Hamilton maintained second place and began to close the distance to Alonso, who was joined by Sainz and Gasly, who were on the mend, in a battle for the podium spots. When Kevin Magnussen slammed into the wall coming out of Turn 2, lost his rear-right wheel, and scattered debris from his Haas over the racing line, another Safety Car and then another red flag were thrown late in the race.
As a result, there would be a third standing start and the possibility of a two-lap shootout on soft tyres. However, only a few seconds later, more contact and drama broke out when Sainz tipped fellow Spaniard Alonso into a spin in the Turn 1 bottleneck. As he re-entered the track from behind, Gasly took evasive action and slammed into teammate Esteban Ocon of Alpine, putting both drivers out on the spot. Logan Sargeant also collided with Nyck de Vries’ rear, and both Stroll and Sergio Perez, who had just emerged from the pit lane, went off-track in their own ways.
The race resumed behind the Safety Car in the order of the previous start, minus the cars that had been eliminated, after some confusion about how the race would proceed and the results would be decided. Verstappen crossed the finish line first for his first Australian victory after a rolling start, with Hamilton and Alonso rounding out the podium ahead of Sainz, Stroll, Perez, and Lando Norris. Sainz, who collided with Alonso, was given a five-second time penalty, which elevated everyone behind him. Nico Hulkenberg, ahead of Oscar Piastri, Zhou Guanyu, Yuki Tsunoda, Valtteri Bottas, and home favourite Yuki Tsunoda, finished seventh.
