Six F1 drivers are starting their first full season at the Australian Grand Prix this weekend. And Karun Chandhok is already concerned about one of them.
Two of the rookies are teenagers, with Kimi Antonelli becoming the third-youngest F1 driver ever at Mercedes. Antonelli asked Lewis Hamilton a series of questions ahead of his first pre-race press conference on Thursday.
The other teen is Antonelli’s former F2 teammate Oliver Bearman. The Briton was outstanding when he deputised for Haas and Ferrari last year, but he made a nightmare start as he thumped the barriers in FP1 and missed the entirety of the second session.
| DRIVER | RACES | WINS | POLES | PODIUMS | POINTS |
| Jack Doohan | 59 | 6 | 5 | 11 | 303 |
| Isack Hadjar | 54 | 4 | 1 | 9 | 247 |
| Oliver Bearman | 50 | 7 | 3 | 8 | 205 |
| Gabriel Bortoleto | 28 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 214.5 |
| Andrea Kimi Antonelli | 26 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 113 |
On the other end of the scale, Isack Hadjar caught the eye in sixth place in FP2. Racing Bulls may have run a lower fuel load than their competitors – Yuki Tsunoda was fourth – but it was an impressive effort nonetheless.
Jack Doohan remains calm ‘behind the scenes’ even amid intense speculation that Franco Colapinto will replace him at Alpine before the spring is out. Doohan commendably outpaced Pierre Gasly in both Friday outings.
F2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto was unsurprisingly near the back of the grid in a Sauber car that’s expected to be slowest. Liam Lawson isn’t technically a rookie, having started 11 races, but he’s never driven at the Australian Grand Prix venue before.
Karun Chandhok says Red Bull have made two mistakes with F1 driver line-ups in 2025
Lawson’s ‘face dropped’ in disappointment when he realised he was the only driver in the field with no Albert Park experience. He’s tackled the circuit on the simulator, but he’s still at a clear disadvantage.
That was perhaps evident on Friday as Lawson lapped a combined 1.4s slower than Max Verstappen across the two practice sessions. He finished the day down in 17th place.
During testing, Karun Chandhok said Lawson was at risk of ‘burning out’ at Red Bull. He suggested that it may be ‘too soon’ for the 23-year-old.
And speaking on the F1 Show in Melbourne, Chandhok went a step further and said it is too soon for Lawson. He believes Red Bull should have kept him alongside Yuki Tsunoda at the Racing Bulls team and kept Isack Hadjar in a reserve role.
“They’ve plucked Liam in really too soon, I think,” Chandhok said. “I think they should, in an ideal world, have had Liam in Racing Bulls with a full season, with Hadjar as a reserve maybe. But they didn’t have the pipeline.
“They haven’t created that pipeline like they did with the Vettels, the Ricciardos, the Kvyats. That pipeline has gone from 10 years ago. It’s coming back now.”
Christian Horner’s advice to Liam Lawson sounds eerily like what he said to Sergio Perez
Lawson sent Christian Horner a ‘proud’ photo after receiving confirmation of his promotion last December. He’s not the first driver to be fast-tracked, with Alex Albon promoted from Toro Rosso just halfway through his rookie year in 2019.
Albon did ‘burn out’, one could argue, as he ended up out of F1 at the end of the 2020 season. But Helmut Marko says Lawson has brought a ‘wave of enthusiasm’ to the team after replacing Sergio Perez.
That won’t last long if he struggles in the same manner as the Mexican. Horner has clarified that Lawson shouldn’t focus on Verstappen, because he isn’t necessarily a realistic target.
That sounds eerily like the advice he gave Perez. And while he started 2024 relatively well, he couldn’t help but lose confidence as the season progressed.
