Mercedes magic and technical turmoil: Takeaways from F1's season debut in Australia

Racecraft is back in a big way, but these new cars are going to take some getting used to.

In 2025, the Australian Grand Prix saw 45 overtakes in total. In 2026, Max Verstappen alone managed about half that number in his 58-lap quest from 20th to sixth.

F1's new technical regulations begat smaller, nimbler cars and greater driver autonomy, and that means they begat better racecraft, too. The Australian Grand Prix showed that we're in for closer racing, tighter overtakes and an ever-changing grid in F1 in 2026.

We're also in for a decent ramp-up time before all the drivers feel truly comfortable in their cars. This Grand Prix weekend saw several championship contenders—including hometown Aussie hero Oscar Piastri—make silly mistakes that jeopardized their races. These machines are new for everyone; the whole grid is going to need a few more Grands Prix to iron out their kinks.

Ferrari looked great...except for when it didn't.

Watching the start of the Australian Grand Prix was like watching the start of a new Ferrari era. Charles Leclerc, sitting in fourth place, absolutely flew off the line and left the rest of the field in his wake. We'd heard rumblings of Ferrari's superior starts, but seeing them in action was something special. The Italian team looked set to dominate.

And then...it didn't. A serious of questionable strategy calls—something Ferrari has become infamous for in recent seasons—kept the team from challenging Mercedes at the top of the podium. 

First, Ferrari kept Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton on the same strategy during a virtual safety car, allowing their opponents to pit for fresh tires. Then, Ferrari called Hamilton in at the worst possible time and dropped from podium contention into a distant fourth place.

On a good day, Ferrari could be capable of challenging Mercedes for race wins. But with calls like that, just how many good days can we expect the team have?

Aston Martin really is just running its own race.

No team fell further between 2025 and 2026 than Aston Martin. The British team, led by legendary car designer Adrian Newey, struggled to merge its newly-developed chassis with its newly-developed Honda engine, and the resulting car has been shaky enough to threaten its drivers with permanent nerve damage.

Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso made it through 15 excruciating laps of the Australian Grand Prix before seemingly retiring his car in the pits. But twenty minutes later, out of nowhere, Alonso was back on the track. He was 10 laps down on his competitors, sure, but he was driving.

Why? Information. Aston Martin's car managed so few laps in preseason testing that the team couldn't waste an opportunity to run it a little longer. Alonso didn't reenter the race to compete; he reentered it just to give his team a few more laps of data from his cursed car. What a spectacular, sobering come-down for the two-time world champion.

F1 will return on Sunday, March 15 with the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, China.