George Russell and Kimi Antonelli bulldozed the F1 field to roar to a Mercedes front-row lock-out at the Australian Grand Prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the first race of F1’s new era, the duo were nearly eight-tenths faster than their nearest rival, Isack Hadjar of Red Bull, as Mercedes unleashed the true performance of its W17 machine.<\/p>\n
Behind them, Max Verstappen will be 20th on the grid following a crash in Q1 caused by a car fault, with reigning world champion Lando Norris sixth, behind Charles Leclerc and Norris’s own team-mate, home hero Oscar Piastri.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton is seventh, whilst Fernando Alonso is 17th, having out-qualified both Cadillacs.<\/p>\n
Check out the full starting grid for the 2026 F1 Australian Grand Prix below!<\/p>\n
NOTE: Grid remains provisional until officially confirmed by the FIA.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell and Kimi Antonelli bulldozed the F1 field to roar to a Mercedes front-row lock-out at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,824,44,822],"class_list":["post-524754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-news","tag-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}