Australian Grand Prix RECAP: Lap-by-lap updates as the largest rule modifications in F1 historical past are put to the check in Melbourne

Thanks for your company as the 2026 F1 season got underway with a Mercedes 1-2 finish in Melbourne.

George Russell took the win ahead of Kimi Antonelli, with Ferrari providing stiff competition for the first 20-odd laps of the race before the Silver Arrows ran away with it.

Keep checking in with the Daily Mail for all the latest reaction in the aftermath of the debut of the biggest rule overhaul in the sport’s history.

Here’s Franco Colapinto showing off some godlike reflexes to avoid slamming into the back of Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls car.

‘I almost had a massive crash with Liam as he got stuck on the grid, and I was really lucky to get through lap one,’ Colapinto said after the race.

‘We all know things can happen with these new cars, but the video shows it was very dangerous and quite sketchy.’

It looks like the doom and gloom from fans and some of the drivers was a little overstated.

Yes, the cars are obviously slower. Yes, some of the drivers struggled to come to grips with the complexity of building up and deploying the charge from the battery. And yes, it looks reminiscent of 2014, when Mercedes aced the new tech rules and were rarely headed for the rest of the year.

However, we did get some big helpings of drama right from lights out, as Leclerc charged through the field and staged a ding-dong battle with Russell until the first safety car period. There were lead changes aplenty and the underlying message is that the Ferrari – on a track it seems less suited to than the Mercedes – isn’t as far off the pace as people feared after qualifying.

There were fewer retirements/non-starters than many had anticipated, and it’s hard to put Piastri’s crash down to the effects of the new regs, Verstappen set the fastest lap of the race in a Red Bull that could yet prove it belongs on the podium, and even the Aston Martins managed to clock up more laps than anticipated.

And bear in mind how important the development battle will be this year. In 2022 we saw a Ferrari 1-2 in the first GP in Bahrain, only for Red Bull to do a far better job of wringing performance out of their car over the rest of the season.

Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren have a mountain to climb to match Mercedes, but it doesn’t appear to be as cut and dried as many feared.

After a fine drive full of eye-catching overtakes as he went from 18th on the grid to sixth, you’d think Max Verstappen would be a happy man.

He’s not.

Asked if he enjoyed the race, the Red Bull star shot back with, ‘No, not really.

‘The overtakes were fun but I’m also racing cars that are two seconds slower.

‘We had too much deg [tyre degredation] … the two hard compounds didn’t work for us. We had a lot of graining and needed a two-stop.’

The seven-time world champion – and all the Tifosi around the world – were gutted after last year’s Australian Grand Prix, when he finished 10th with Leclerc eighth. It was the first of many failures for the Prancing Horse, leaving Hamilton to remark ‘I lost sight of who I was’ once the season was done.

After this year’s chequered flag fell, he was upbeat and raring to keep bringing the fight to Mercedes after the team’s impressive showing.

‘I’m genuinely really proud of the team. I think we’ve done an amazing job to get the car to where it is,’ he said.

‘Of course, we’re not as fast as Mercedes, we’ve got work to do, but we’re right in the fight and it was a really, really fun race and it felt good for me also.

‘A couple more laps and I would’ve had Charles, so I had great pace.

‘Lots and lots of positives to take from today.’

The newlywed had an electric start that saw him grab the lead into turn one, then mix it up with Russell until the first virtual safety car – when Ferrari made a strategy mistake by not pitting either driver.

‘The person who has been switching on the lights [at starts] has been quite cheeky because for the start of the season for these cars to go so quick lights off, I think it took everybody by surprise,’ Leclerc said.

‘It was a fun first half of the race and P3 was the best we could do today.’

Despite the win, the Mercedes star had some misgivings about how the cars behaved.

‘We had the suspicion hat it was going to be a bit of a yo-yo effect. As soon as one of us got in front, it was impossible to hold it,’ he said.

‘Obviously with this straight mode we lose a lot of front end on the cars, so we’re sort of understeering a lot around these corners.

‘Maybe the FIA are going to have to improve that a little bit because it was a bit sketchy, but I made it in one piece.’

Hats off to Max Verstappen for flying up from 18th on the grid to finish sixth, albeit a worrying 54 seconds behind Russell.

And congratulations to Arvid Lindblad, who finished eighth and collected points in his first grand prix.

‘It was a hell of a fight at the beginning,’ he told Jenson Button.

‘I made a bad start, and [had] some really tight battles with Charles at the start.

‘Just really glad to cross the finish line.’

When the top three drivers were in the cool-down room, Russell admitted he ‘screwed up’ by forgetting to press his overtake button. He also repeated what he said on radio just before the lights went out to get the race underway – he didn’t get enough charge into his battery, contributing to Leclerc’s brilliant effort to take the lead off the line.

‘You guys weren’t slow, you guys were not slow,’ the Briton tells Leclerc.

The trophy presentation is run and done, with Russell leaping into the air from top spot on the podium as he receives his trophy.

The Aussie left his fans absolutely gutted by binning his McLaren on the reconnaissance lap.

‘A scenario like that just shouldn’t happen, so it’s obviously very disappointing,’ he said.

‘We had a couple of things going on but I think the first part I want to stress is that there is certainly a big element of it that was me.

‘Cold tyres, I have used that exit kerb every lap of the weekend, but maybe I didn’t have to.’

Piastri suggested that the incident was somewhat related to battling with F1’s new regulations, but said there was no mechanical fault with his car.

‘We had a bit of an issue out of the pits with no battery, basically,’ Piastri said.

‘With the actual crash … I also had 100 kilowatts more power than I expected, so you put all of those together and, unfortunately, it ends in the result we got.

‘I was backwards before I’d really even had a chance to react. It happened pretty quick.

‘But obviously crashing out of the race trying to get to the race is the situation that we were in.’