Elevated into the lead when McLaren’s “panic” had both drivers pitting, Max Verstappen says Red Bull had to “gamble” as it was their best chance to win the Australian Grand Prix.

Lining up on a sodden Albert Park grid in third place behind an all-McLaren front row, Verstappen ran second in the early laps, having overtaken Oscar Piastri around the outside of Turn 2 on the opening lap.

Max Verstappen: I think it was worth the gamble

However, he wasn’t able to repeat his mastery from last year’s wet Brazilian Grand Prix as a mistake of his own when he ran too deep into Turn 11 allowed McLaren to regain the 102.

They began to pull away from Verstappen, who was complaining to Red Bull that his tyres were “f**ked”.

But with more rain coming, the Dutchman was told to stay out with all the drivers pushing their intermediate tyres to the very end of the rubber.

It caught out McLaren, first Lando Norris and then Oscar Piastri going off at the same corner. But while Norris was able to recover quite quickly, Piastri’s returned to the track only to slide off into the grass on the other side where he became stuck.

F1 2025: Driver head-to-head stats

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Norris, despite still being in the lead but only by metres ahead of Verstappen, pulled into the pits immediately while Verstappen stayed out to lead the race ahead of Lewis Hamilton.

But as more rain came down, the reigning World Champion asked his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase if they shouldn’t also pit. He was told to “stay out”, but moments later it was “box, box”.

He returned to the action in second place behind Norris, the two holding those positions through to the chequered flag.

Verstappen reckons even if he had pitted along with Norris, he still would’ve been second on the day.

“It started to rain a bit, they went off and it was a bit like a panic, like ‘oh, I need to box’. So they went in,” he said. “I stayed out.

“The first lap, honestly, I think it was alright. But then, unfortunately, yeah, the weather continued a little bit more on the other side of the track as well. And we then have to box.

“But I think at the end of the day, even if we would have boxed like one lap earlier, we would’ve still been P2 anyway after that stop.

“I think it was worth the gamble. It was quite spicy out there with the slick tyres but it was alright in the end.”

There was, however, one brief moment when second could’ve been first when Norris had a moment at Turn 6 on the penultimate lap. That allowed Verstappen to close right up on his rear wing but the Dutchman wasn’t able to pass and took the chequered flag 0.9s down on his title rival and good friend.

“At the end it was fun,” he said. “Lando had a little moment on entry at 6, lost a lot of momentum there, so that’s why I got close, and then I got the DRS. So I got close, but it’s very hard to pass around here, but it was fun.

“Those last laps here were pushing, at least, we were fighting for the win, but I’m just very happy to bring it home. Score, good points, and this is decent starting point for us.”

Leaving Melbourne with 18 points, a handful more than Red Bull thought they would score after a difficult Friday, Verstappen concedes they’re lack pace compared to McLaren.

“I think it is where I expected to be. You can see also in that first stint we were lacking a little bit of pace compared to the McLaren, but it’s still 18 points more than what I had here last year.”

It meant the first time since 2022, Verstappen is not leading the F1 World Championship standings.

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