Australian Grand Prix was gloriously bonkers

Melbourne served up an extraordinarily chaotic, dangerous, tense and controversial edition of the Australian Grand Prix.

Dutchman Max Verstappen (left) celebrates with his Oracle Red Bull team after winning the Australian Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne on Sun day. Picture: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

The forecast for Melbourne was overcast skies, breathtaking drama and a Max Verstappen victory. Zero chance of rain or an Oscar Piastri triumph. All proved correct and yet this was an extraordinarily chaotic, dangerous, tense and controversial edition of the Australian Grand Prix.

Bonkers, really. Gloriously so. You could make a Netflix documentary out of this stuff. It was a cannonball run featuring no less than three red flags before Red Bull’s Verstappen took the chequered one at Albert Park.

It was a bar room brawl on wheels, a crashing, bashing, nerve-shredding, knife-edge afternoon of racing at speeds of up to ­320km/h that had a capacity crowd of 131,000 hollering for more as ­Piastri, the 21-year-old Melburnian, emerged from the smoke and debris in the glory of ninth place.

“It was a crazy race. Obviously,” he said. “The first race I’ve had with three red flags. We kept ourselves out of trouble and ended up with points at the end, which is great. It was a positive day and still some learning to do.”

Piastri has revealed himself to be a mature and likeable young bloke with a world-class ability to press a pedal to metal. He won an army of fans while wrestling his inferior McLaren to the first top-ten finish of his fledgling three-race Formula One career. Loudest roars of the day came from the engines of these grunting, guttural, thunderous cars, and from the local revheads in the stands for ­Piastri.

Verstappen’s victory in an afternoon of dodgem cars gone mad came from Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso. All three people on the podium were world champions. When the 41-year-old Alonso was asked if he had ever experienced a race like it, he ­replied: “Probably not! We had a rollercoaster of emotions today. Many things going on. The last half an hour, it was difficult to understand what was going on. We’ll take third. It’s an excellent Sunday.”

Fernando Alonso in a collision during the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at The Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit in Albert Parka. Picture: Dave Hewison/Speed Media/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Hamilton said: “It was a crazy race. I’ve got to say a huge thank you to everyone in Australia and Melbourne. I’ve had the best week. This track and this town continues to put on a great show. What a legend of a finish. We had a world champion (Verstappen) up ahead, we have three world champions in the top three, that’s pretty amazing.”

Twenty cars started. Eleven finished. “I was being careful,” Verstappen said after winning his first Australian title. “These red flags, I don’t know. The first one maybe you can do it but I think that second one, I don’t really understand. It was a bit of a mess but we survived everything and we won. Which, of course, is the most important thing. Very, very happy and great to see that the fans are having a great time.”

In the wildest of finishes, the race was reduced to a two-lap shootout after Haas’s Kevin Magnussen crashed out. Then four more drivers had fender-benders to reduce the finish to a single-lap shootout – which wasn’t a shootout at all. The final lap was behind a safety car, which prevented overtaking, allowing Verstappen to cruise over the line. The only bloke happier than him was Piastri.

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc spins out. Picture: Paul Crock/AFP

The rookie kept his nose and clunky McLaren clean, chugging along (at up to 320km/h) as things went berserk all around him. He remained patient when everyone else was off to the panel beaters. He kept his head when most others were losing theirs. In the confusion of red flags and restarts, he went from 11th to seventh to ninth. He’d take it. The best result of his rookie season proved he belonged in the fast lane of world sport.

Piastri’s stablemate Lando Norris finished sixth at Albert Park as the McLaren gained championship points for the first time this year.

“To have both of us in the points, and strongly in the points, is good,” Piastri said. “It obviously wasn’t a great first two races for the whole team, for things largely out of our control. More things out of our control went right today, I guess, to get us into the points. To get this amount of points this early in the year … it’s a great result.”