claiming eighth place on the grid<\/a> dissipated at the start.<\/p>\nHe dropped back to 18th, as he complained on the Racing Bulls team radio of mechanical issues.<\/p>\n
“What is my battery doing?,” he exclaimed.<\/p>\n
He was able to climb to 13th place, helped by withdrawals during the race, finishing a lap behind Russell.<\/p>\n
Before the race, Australian Oscar Piastri crashed on a reconnaisance lap. While not injured, his McLaren was too damaged to take part in the race.<\/p>\n
Lawson’s Racing Bulls teammate Arvid Lindblad finished eighth in his F1 debut.<\/p>\n
After dominating qualifying, pole-sitter Russell’s first win at Albert Park underlined Mercedes’ promising pre-season form.<\/p>\n
The Briton finished nearly three seconds ahead of Antonelli, with Leclerc more than 15 seconds behind on a cloudy afternoon at the lakeside circuit.<\/p>\n
Russell engaged in a thrilling early duel with Leclerc, as the racers swapped the lead seven times in the opening nine laps, but Mercedes soon put daylight on the rest.<\/p>\n
After swapping out medium tyres early, following a virtual safety-car deployment, Russell rode the hard compounds for 45 laps and Mercedes’ pace did the rest.<\/p>\n
“Great job everybody, it’s been a long time since we’ve been here,” he said over the team radio.<\/p>\n
McLaren had a tough day, with Piastri’s race over before it began some 40 minutes before the start.<\/p>\n
Teammate and defending champion Norris finished fifth, one place behind seven-time world champion Hamilton of Ferrari.<\/p>\n
Only 20 of the 22 cars started, with Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg scratched just before the race, due to a reliability problem.<\/p>\n
Another three cars failed to finish, Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar among them.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kiwi Liam Lawson trails Mexican Sergio Perez during the Australian Grand Prix. Photo: AFP Kiwi driver Liam Lawson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-318910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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