ROUND 1: 🇦🇺 Australia
FORMULA 1 QATAR AIRWAYS AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX 2026
Weekend Schedule
Click here to view the schedule in your local timezone
- 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) 🔴
And we’re off 🏎️💨
Well, Max is.
Can’t remember the last time I saw Verstappen crash like that. So bizarre.
I mean, I’m not a Max fan at all, but that definitely didn’t look like driver error.
With how much negative torque is coming from MGU this year I expect teams will need a few more rounds to figure out car balance under braking.
There was a discussion about NOT getting the battery to 100% too, as you then unexpectedly loose breaking as the battery can’t charge.
Or maybe you don’t lose braking but instead it falls back to the hydraulic disc calipers and those aren’t perfectly equal in braking force to the generator brake. Possibly in Max’ case they were a tad stronger, enough to spin him around instantly
Looks like the rest of the cars have it relatively figured out though. At the beginning if testing you saw a lot more cars struggling to brake than now. Maybe it was a very unfortunate error in Max car system.
Oh yeah didn’t mean to imply driver error. Just stunned seeing his car go off like that.