By Ian Ransom
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Lewis Hamilton will launch his bid to win the drivers’ championship at a third Formula One team when he makes his much-anticipated debut for Ferrari in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Formula One’s most successful team have not won a championship since the 2008 constructors’ title and Hamilton, moving from Mercedes to Maranello, arrives chasing a record eighth.
Hamilton’s switch has already sent fans into a frenzy in Italy and Melbourne’s big Italian community will be out in force at Albert Park as the lakeside circuit hosts the opener for the first time since 2019.
Ferrari, runners-up to McLaren in the 2024 constructors’ championship, celebrated a 1-2 in Melbourne last year when Carlos Sainz, who has since moved to Williams, won the race ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc.
McLaren, however, may be set to steal Hamilton’s thunder after encouraging performances in winter testing with F1 data showing they were quickest on low fuel in Bahrain and had an advantage over Ferrari on race pace.
That would have been music to the ears of Australian fans cheering for McLaren’s Oscar Piastri as he looks to become the first home driver to win the race since it was added to the F1 world championship calendar in 1985.
The Melbourne native finished fourth last year at Albert Park behind third-placed teammate Lando Norris.
Briton Norris, the bookmakers’ pre-season favourite for the championship, may well be Piastri’s biggest obstacle to a drought-breaking win for Australia.
Though Hamilton’s Ferrari debut and McLaren’s pre-season form have dominated the buildup, Red Bull’s defending champion Max Verstappen will launch his bid to become the second man to win five drivers’ titles in a row following Michael Schumacher.
Red Bull finished only third in the constructors’ championship last season and after doing the least amount of laps at winter testing the pace of the car remains to be seen.
“We learnt a lot from testing but there is still a lot more work to be done,” Verstappen said in a race preview issued by Red Bull on Tuesday.
“We have ideas about what we can do and how we can take on what we learnt at testing, so we will see how we go when we start driving on the track.”
Verstappen has a new teammate in New Zealander Liam Lawson, who Red Bull hope will offer better support for the Dutch driver than the discarded Sergio Perez.
Lawson is among six drivers at Albert Park who will race in an F1 season-opener for the first time.
There will be plenty of interest in how 18-year-old Italian Andrea Kimi Antonelli fares in his F1 debut for Mercedes, having stepped into Hamilton’s huge shoes at the Brackley-based team.
British teen rival Oliver Bearman will drive for Haas after being a reserve for the U.S. team last year, while young Frenchman Isack Hadjar, the F2 runner-up, will debut at Racing Bulls.
Brazilian F2 champion Gabriel Bortoleto will step up for struggling Sauber while Australia’s Jack Doohan will hope to make an instant impression in his home race amid speculation he may only be warming the seat at Alpine for Argentine reserve driver Franco Colapinto.
While Albert Park will give an early indication of how the teams stack up, it offers different conditions to Bahrain and usually throws up a surprise or two.
Rain forecast for race-day could add another twist following the scorching heat expected at qualifying on Saturday.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
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