Formula 1’s rookie class of 2025 will certainly not be forgetting the opening weekend of their first full seasons on the grid anytime soon after a dramatic start to the year for all six of them at the Australian Grand Prix.

From some eye-catching turns of speed, to a spate of costly crashes and one notable recovery drive in the race-day rain, we take a look at where the rookies’ Melbourne baptisms went right, where they went wrong, and who said what afterwards ahead a swift turnaround to round two in China this weekend…

Andrea Kimi Antonelli – Mercedes

Qualified: 16th; Team-mate (Russell) qualified: 4th
Qualifying gap to team-mate (Q1): +0.554
Finished: 4th; Team-mate finished: 3rd

Andrea Kimi Antonelli was certainly the rookie surrounded by the most hype and expectation going into Melbourne.

Still, it’s easy to forget that at just 18 the Italian is the youngest of 2025’s intake and when he took to the treacherously wet starting grid on Sunday he became the third-youngest driver to ever start a Grand Prix. Oh, and of course, he is stepping into a Mercedes cockpit recently vacated by the sport’s most-successful ever driver too.

Added to all that, along with the usual challenges of a debut race, was the fact that a troubled qualifying had left Antonelli 16th on the grid after a kerb strike in Q1 had caused floor damage to his W16, costing car performance. That he then came through in a race as challenging as Sunday’s to finish up in fourth to back up team-mate George Russell’s podium was all the more impressive.

An early spin off the track could have had greater repercussions, while the swift timing of Mercedes switch to intermediates with 14 laps to go worked massively in his favour by catapulting him from 10th to fifth, but Antonelli kept his head well and then showed his overtaking prowess by passing Alex Albon’s Williams for fourth on the penultimate lap around the outside into Turn Nine. That fourth-place finish ultimately stood too after stewards overturned their earlier decision to impose a five-second time penalty on Antonelli for an unsafe pits release.

He also enters the record books as the youngest driver to score points in their debut race.

What Antonelli said: “I was happy with how we managed everything from start to finish and to come home P4, having started P16, is really positive. I definitely can’t complain about how my debut race in F1 has gone.”

What Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said: “We always knew the potential. We’ve followed him since he was a kid, and he performs under pressure. In qualifying, that wasn’t his doing – he just hit the bump in the wrong place. He would have qualified much further ahead.

“And [in the race] you saw that he was able to just able to reel everybody in slowly but surely, without making any mistakes. He had a little spin but otherwise, P4 is the result that he merits.”

Liam Lawson – Red Bull

Qualified: 18th; Team-mate (Verstappen) qualified: 3rd
Qualifying gap to team-mate (Q1): +1.076
Finished: DNF (crash); Team-mate finished: 2nd

Not that they’ll need any reminding, but Red Bull have got used to seeing their drivers occupying contrasting ends of the grid after Sergio Perez’s painful final months at the team last season. Despite a winter change of occupant in the second seat next to Max Verstappen, that troubling sequence continued with Liam Lawson in Melbourne.

Lawson is more of an honorary rookie than an absolutely bona-fide one owing to his 11 starts for Red Bull’s junior team over the previous two seasons, but his debut outing for their main squad was still his first F1 weekend truly in the spotlight at a leading team.

On an Albert Park track he had never driven before, Lawson wasn’t happy with his pace in the RB21 right from Friday practice onwards and so the last thing he needed was a power-unit problem to rule him out of the final session before qualifying. A pair of mistakes in Q1 compounded that lack of running, seeing him drop out early in 18th place.

Given Sunday’s wet weather, Red Bull took Lawson’s out-of-position car out of parc ferme to add more rear wing on to aid downforce, changes which locked Lawson into a pit-lane start, but progress for the New Zealander up the field was still a struggle. Running 14th into the closing stages, their late shot-to-nothing gamble on sticking with slicks as the rain returned ultimately saw him helplessly spin into the wall.

What Lawson said: “This whole weekend was pretty terrible. [In the race] we were too slow at the start and then we gambled. It nearly worked, but it wasn’t to be.

“Starting from the pit lane was tough and we just didn’t really have the speed in the first stint on the inter. We struggled with the fronts too much, so we will analyse and look at that in detail before the next race. On slick tyres it was quite competitive for that couple of laps but then it started raining again.”

What Red Bull boss Christian Horner said: “It was a difficult weekend for him. We changed the car to put a bit more downforce on it. It’s a very hard track to overtake at. We took the risk of leaving him out that long because he was outside the points and we thought, roll the dice, maybe it will come right. But at exactly the point that it started to rain more, so it’s difficult to blame him for that last spin.

“The one flash of light that he can take out of it is that on the dry tyres, he actually posted the second fastest lap time of the grand prix. If there was one positive we can take, it’s that his pace in the dry was not too bad.

“[China] will be tough because it’s a sprint race at a track that he’s not been to before, but he’s pretty resilient. This weekend wasn’t representative of what he’s capable of.”

Isack Hadjar – Racing Bulls

Qualified: 11th; Team-mate (Tsunoda) qualified: 5th
Gap to team-mate (Q2): +0.116s
Finished: DNS (crash); Team-mate finished: 12th

Compared to 2024 F2 rivals Kimi Antonelli, Oliver Bearman and champion Gabriel Bortoleto, there had been relatively little fanfare around Isack Hadjar’s arrival onto the F1 grid during the winter despite the 20-year-old finishing runner-up to the latter in the feeder series last year.

But with Racing Bulls looking surprisingly quick around Albert Park, Hadjar’s debut weekend was going along quite nicely as he finished within the top 10 in both Friday practice sessions and then came within a whisker of following team-mate Yuki Tsunoda through into Q3 on Saturday.

Eleventh was still a very promising starting berth to hold for a rain-hit race poised to be full of opportunity but Hadjar, of course, never took up that spot on the race grid proper after spinning out within two corners of his maiden formation lap.

A gut-wrenching moment for the young Frenchman played out in front of a huge global TV audience and, as the tears seemed to flow behind his crash helmet, one which was hard not to feel huge sympathy towards him for. Anthony Hamilton acted as surely a conduit for many by going to console the dejected Hadjar on his return to the paddock, although perhaps not Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko who reportedly described his driver’s tears as “a bit embarrassing” in an interview with Austrian broadcaster ORF…

What Hadjar said: “I just lost the rear end of the car. These cars in these conditions just snap so fast and it’s unsavable. I couldn’t get the grip back. I knew it was going to be tricky, even on the installation laps to the grid I was like ‘this is tricky’ but it’s definitely driveable. I’m just sorry for the team right now and my close ones watching the race so, yeah, it’s just embarrassing. [Anthony Hamilton] told me to keep my head high, be proud and he did say I did well [in qualifying], a nice gesture from him.”

What Racing Bulls boss Laurent Mekies said: “Isack, we know how he feels. We know how tough it is to go through these sort of moments but, for him, let’s not forget how strong his weekend was up until now. He was half a tenth from Q3, he had not to put a foot wrong until the very tricky conditions [of the race] and he’ll get the full support of the team.”

What Red Bull boss Christian Horner said: “It was quite heart wrenching to see him so gutted. I think the positives he needs to take out of it, when he reflects on the weekend, he performed very well through the practices and the qualifying. You forget that these guys, they’re just kids really. There was a lot of emotion for him today but I think when he strips it back, there’s an awful lot of positives he can take out of the weekend. He’s got many bright days ahead of him.”

Jack Doohan – Alpine

Qualified 14th; Team-mate (Gasly) qualified: 9th
Qualifying gap to team-mate (Q2): +0.751s
Finished: DNF (crash); Team-mate finished: 11th

Having spent so many interviews in the build-up to his maiden home race weekend having to navigate questions about the immediate security of his new seat following Alpine’s signing of Franco Colapinto as a high-profile reserve, Australia’s Jack Doohan was showing glimpses of why he had been handed the position in the first place in Melbourne.

He qualified 14th, which could have been better but for the late yellow flags of Q2 given he had lapped 0.5s quicker in Q1 to outpace Pierre Gasly, and was piecing together a solid weekend overall. That was until the first lap of the race when he dropped his car as he moved up the gears in the wet coming out of Turn Five. Doohan lost control, spun into the outside wall and brought out the race’s first of three Safety Cars.

What Doohan said: “It was an unfortunate end to an overall positive weekend. It was the result of a combination of factors which we will go over together as a team to learn from and ensure it does not happen again. It is a tough way to learn but I have digested what happened and put it behind me to focus on what is ahead.

“The positive learnings from the weekend outweigh the outcome from today, we were strong yesterday afternoon but caught out with the yellow flag. All the weekend the pace has been there.”

What Alpine boss Oliver Oakes said: “For Jack it’s obviously not how he wanted his race to end, but he has shown positive pace across the entire weekend.”

Oliver Bearman – Haas

Qualified: 20th; Team-mate (Ocon) qualified: 19th
Qualifying gap to team-mate: N/A
Finished: 14th; Team-mate finished: 13th

Last of the 14 finishers on Sunday but simply seeing the chequered flag represented an end-of-weekend plus for Oliver Bearman given how much of a nightmare the season opener had been for him up to then.

The 19-year-old Briton impressively scored points in two of his three ‘super-sub’ stand-in appearances for Ferrari/Haas last season and, although the latter certainly didn’t have the car to trouble the Albert Park top 10 on Sunday, Bearman’s first steps as a full-time F1 driver could barely have been more contrasting to those assured 2024 showings.

He missed all of the second practice session after doing major damage to his car by crashing in the first, before then beaching it in the gravel when back on track on Saturday morning. An untimely gearbox glitch at the start of qualifying condemned him to the back of the grid. From a pit-lane start, completing 57 laps on Sunday to get to the finish on a treacherous day was certainly a timely bonus and one he will now aim to build on in Shanghai.

What Bearman said: “The aim of [Sunday] was to get the laps in and collect data. I’m quite happy with my performance, I felt like I executed things well.

“There are a few things where we lost a bit of time, but when you’re not fighting for points it’s the time to try things, and it just didn’t work this time – now on to China.”

Gabriel Bortoleto – Sauber

Qualified: 15th; Team-mate (Hulkenberg) qualified: 17th
Qualifying gap to team-mate (Q1): -0.063
Finished: DNF (crash); Team-mate finished: 7th

Two days after saying he would prove Red Bull’s Helmut Marko wrong about being ranked as a ‘B driver’ by the Austrian among F1’s rookie class, Gabriel Bortoleto was the only one of the six full debutants to outqualify his more experienced team-mate – who in the reigning F2 champion’s case is Nico Hulkenberg, the 37-year-old German who consistently starred over a single lap during his time at Haas.

It was 228-race veteran Hulkenberg, though, who was there at the end of the race to pick up some unexpected early points for Sauber with a seventh place, having run as their lead car ahead of Bortoleto from lap 14 onwards. The Brazilian rookie’s race ended with 12 laps to go when he spun off at the penultimate corner on his new intermediate tyres as the rain pelted down.

What Bortoleto said: “Unfortunately, the race didn’t end as we had hoped – which is a shame, as things were going quite well for me up until that moment. Once the Safety Car period ended, I found myself at the very back, tried to recover, but touched the kerb and ultimately ended up in the wall. We knew anything could happen in conditions like these; we gave it everything but pushed a little too hard.”

Sky Sports F1’s live Chinese GP schedule

Thursday March 20

• 5am: Drivers’ Press Conference

Friday March 21

• 1am: F1 Academy Practice
• 3am: Chinese GP Practice One (session starts at 3.30am)*
• 5.30am: Team Principals’ Press Conference
• 6am: F1 Academy Qualifying*
• 6.45am: Chinese GP Sprint Qualifying (session starts at 7.30am)*

Saturday March 22

• 2.25am: Chinese GP Sprint build-up*
• 3am: Chinese GP Sprint*
• 5.45am: F1 Academy Race 1*
• 6.35am: Chinese GP Qualifying build-up*
• 7am: CHINESE GP QUALIFYING*
• 9am: Ted’s Qualifying Notebook*

Sunday March 23

• 2.40am: F1 Academy Race 2
• 5.30am: Chinese GP build-up: Grand Prix Sunday*
• 7am: THE CHINESE GRAND PRIX*
• 9am: Chinese GP reaction: Chequered flag*
• 10am: Ted’s Notebook*

*Also on Sky Sports Main Event

The F1 circus heads straight to Shanghai this week for the first Sprint weekend of the season at the Chinese GP, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – No contract, cancel anytime