Lando Norris mastered treacherous, changing conditions in a dramatic, incident-packed race to beat Max Verstappen and win the Australian Grand Prix.
Norris and his McLaren team made the right calls in a race punctuated by crashes, three safety cars and an aborted start as the Briton put together a statement drive at the start of a season he intends to end as world champion.
Norris was forced to fend off a late threat from Verstappen, brought back into contention by a late safety car, but held on to take his fifth career victory.
Lewis Hamilton, making his debut for Ferrari, finished 10th on a difficult day for the team, with George Russell third for Mercedes in Melbourne.
Seven-time champion Hamilton was leading on lap 46 but only because Ferrari had made the wrong decision to stay out on dry-weather slick tyres as a heavy shower hit the track.
He and team-mate Charles Leclerc then had to pit as a safety car was sent out for the final time following a series of crashes and dropped to the bottom of the top 10.
To add insult to injury, Hamilton was overtaken by Leclerc on the final restart, the Ferraris touching wheels lightly in the incident, and then lost a further place as McLaren’s Oscar Piastri sought to recover from a spin that had cost him second place in the late rain.
Williams’ Alex Albon finished fourth, ahead of Mercedes’ 18-year-old Italian rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who was fourth on the road but demoted a place for an unsafe release penalty.
Lewis Hamilton started his first race for Ferrari from eighth on the grid
McLaren acknowledged a concern that Verstappen would be a major threat, so good is he so often in wet conditions, but Norris and Piastri controlled the race from the start and were able to leave the four-time champion behind them for much of the race as chaos unfolded behind them.
The drama began even before the race officially started, when rookie Isack Hadjar spun his Racing Bull car at Turn Two on the formation lap. The Frenchman stood with his head in his hands, apparently crying, before returning to the pits.
After a 15-minute delay, the race finally got under way, only for another rookie, Australian Jack Doohan, to crash his Alpine on the straight between Turns Four and Six and bring out the safety car.
Underlining the difficulty of the conditions, Carlos Sainz immediately crashed his Williams at the final corner as well.
Rookie Isack Hadjar’s damaged Racing Bull lies across the track after he crashed out on the formation lap
When the race finally got properly under way, Norris led but Verstappen passed Piastri to run second, only to lose the position when he ran wide at Turn 11 on lap 17, gifting McLaren a one-two.
The McLarens first stablished their position and then, as they looked after their intermediate tyres more effectively than the Red Bull, built a lead running nose to tail. They pulled 16 seconds on Verstappen by the time the safety car came out for a second time following a crash by Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin at Turn Six on lap 33, just after half distance.
The leaders pitted for slick tyres but there was fresh jeopardy as they waited for the restart – a rain shower was coming in, and the teams could see that it would bring heavy rain for a short period, but long enough to require a tyre change.
Norris was keen to pre-empt the conditions and stop for treaded intermediate tyres early, but was warned that they had to be on the right tyres at the right time.
When the rain came on lap 44, with 13 to go, it brought pandemonium.
