ROUND 1: 🇦🇺 Australia
FORMULA 1 QATAR AIRWAYS AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX 2026
Weekend Schedule
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- Practice 1: Friday, 02:30 CET | 01:30 UTC
- Practice 2: Friday, 06:00 CET | 05:00 UTC
- Practice 3: Saturday, 02:30 CET | 01:30 UTC
- Qualifying: Saturday, 06:00 CET | 05:00 UTC
- Race: Sunday, 05:00 CET | 04:00 UTC
Circuit stats & Tyres
- First Grand Prix: 1996
- Number of laps: 58
- Circuit Length: 5.278 km
- Race Distance: 306.124 km
- Lap record: 1:19.813 Charles Leclerc (2024)
- 2025 Pole: Lando Norris (1:15.096)
- 2025 Fastest Lap: Lando Norris (1:22.167)
- 2025 winner: Lando Norris
- Pirelli Tyres: C3 (Hard) ⚪, C4 (Medium) 🟡, C5 (Soft) 🔴
Glad I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night to watch that. Overtakes just felt artificial, the only interesting battle was Gasly v Ocon, and we saw barely any of that because the coverage seems somehow even worse than last year.
I think that’s what’s making me lose interest more than the new rules. We saw basically nothing of cars lower than 6th place other than stupid picture in picture, if I wanted a screen that small I’d watch the whole thing on my phone. There was minimal graphics and even less talk about strategy with the new rules, where and why battery is being deployed etc. We’re watching cars breeze past each other as the commentator screams about how exciting this is and keeps banging on about sweets. (This is Sky coverage, so idk if it’s better elsewhere, but I assume everyone has the same images at least.)
Complaining about the images the international TV directors are choosing to show, is a tradition for Austrian commentators lol
Sure, Russell shoots by from 100M back while the other guy looks like he hit the brakes. As long as F1 relies on the aero slot cars formula, it will all be processive races with fake passing. It will get worse as all teams will use data to train algorithms to harvest and deploy power in exactly the same way.
The coverage was absolutely weird. I remember looking at the standings mid race and suddenly going “hold on, when did Hulkenberg drop out?” and when Alonso came back on track and retired again I was like “when did that happen?” And I didn’t even know about the absolutely shocking Colapinto almost driving into Lawson until after the race when I saw Russell react to it in the cooldown room. I’m 100% sure I missed some fights because the broadcast was too busy showing Merc and Ferrari and then Max and Lando.