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Visa CashApp Racing Bulls driver Isack Hadjar during the 2025 F1 Australian Grand Prix weekend.
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Slipstream Saturdays: F1 Rookies Face Trial by Fire in Australia

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Watching young drivers climb the ladder to Formula 1 can be an emotional or, at the very least, moving process. The numbers are stacked against each and every driver from the outset. At times it’s easy for we, humble observers, to forget that a grand total of 20 people in the world get to drive these cars for a living.

Indeed, by the time a young talent arrives for their first F1 weekend, the journey behind them is already something exceptional, regardless of what happens next.

Some drivers have a debut that sets the tone for a successful career and some have not. Lewis Hamilton, Jacques Villeneuve both finished on the podium in their respective debuts and went on to be World Champions. Kevin Magnussen came home second in his first Grand Prix, but never went on to finish better than fifth again before exiting the sport after the 2024 season.

What’s more, the list of drivers who had forgettable, if not outright regrettable, debuts and went on to become heroes of F1 is a lengthy one. Simply put, it’s impossible to accurately forecast the trajectory of a driver’s career based on their first outing. All the same, the performances put on by the 2025 rookie class during Saturday’s (March 15) qualifying session in Australia raised eyebrows everywhere.

The newest Mercedes driver, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, may just be the most highly regarded F1 prospect since Max Verstappen. The 18-year-old Italian was identified as a generational talent early in his junior series career and skipped F3 entirely as he jumped straight from regional F4-spec championships into the 2024 FIA Formula 2 championship.

Certainly hopes we high for the Italian’s first qualifying effort in a car that should be a Q3 contender on a weekly basis, but that hope was misplaced for better or for worse.

Antonelli’s outing in Q1 was derailed by floor damage picked up when he ran wide over the exit curb in turn 7. While the stream of sparks flying out from under the Mercedes as it hustled around the rest of the lap was impressive, the speed lost by the excessive car-to-ground contact robbed the Italian of more than one chance to set a competitive time. Despite improving slightly on his last run, 16th was all he could manage. Surely, a disappointed day for the one of the season’s most discussed rookies.

Starting even further back will be Liam Lawson. Rolling off 18th for your debut with Red Bull is not good. There’s no way around it.

Bear in mind that Lawson has just 11 Grand Prix starts to his name, and all of those came in the setting of separate part-time stretches for Racing Bulls, the Red Bull B-team. We’ve waxed philosophical to no end about why Yuki Tsunoda remains in RB oblivion and we’ve spared no expense discussing what seems to be a perpetually hostile work environment within Red Bull at large, but what’s worse is something we’ve yet to discuss, somehow.

As it turns out, Sergio Perez is a hard act to follow.

Perez’s struggles in qualifying throughout 2024 became common knowledge among racing fans and fueled plenty of chiding, for want of a better term, at the Mexican driver on social media before he was let go by Red Bull. Alas, netizens were ready to throw that same energy directly at Lawson after he ran off-track in Q1 and popped himself firmly into and 18th-place grid position.

The lights have yet to go out in his first Grand Prix as a full-time F1 driver and Lawson is already under the microscope. The New Zealander will have a lot to prove on Sunday.

Ahead of both Antonelli and Lawson is Kick Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto.

I won’t carry on endlessly about the hoopla surrounding Helmut Marko labeling Bortoleto a “C driver” during the preseason testing. Marko has a knack for stirring the pot with his opinions and Bortoleto’s advance into Q2 while Lawson binned his last flying lap at the penultimate corner in Q1 is the only response the Brazilian driver needs to offer Marko.

More impressive is that Bortoleto qualified ahead of his more experienced teammate, Nico Hulkenberg. Not by a wide margin, granted, but Hulkenberg is the definition of a journeyman at this point in his career and him being out-qualified by the rookie was not expected in any sense of the word.

For Jack Doohan, Helmut Marko’s designated “C driver,” Saturday was simply forgettable. That’s not a word any driver wants to use to describe any aspect of their first Grand Prix, especially in their home country.

Doohan was put under scrutiny by his team at Alpine during his debut at Abu Dhabi last year, with rumors swirling that the team would use his performance in that single start for 2024 as justification for booting him from the race seat if need be. Even now, Doohan’s name is constantly linked to that of Franco Colapinto, who replaced Logan Sargeant at Williams midway through 2024.

Doohan will start 14th on Sunday, five positions behind teammate Pierre Gasly.

Oliver Bearman has had a bad weekend. That’s a feat of its own because the Briton has barely had a weekend at all in the literal sense.

His first weekend as a full-time Haas driver opened with a hard crash in the first practice session which sat him out for the second practice while the team fixed the car.

Then, he beached the car in the gravel during the final practice session on Saturday and ended the session without setting a time. Just hours later, his qualifying run was cut short by gearbox issues, again before he could post a time. Bearman has been rewarded for all his patience with a last-place starting position.

But don’t forget, this is a driver who scored points on his debut as a substitute for Ferrari on a street circuit. There’s a non-zero chance that Bearman still salvages his weekend in a big way.

We wrap up with Isack Hadjar, perhaps the most unknown of this year’s rookie cohort.

Hadjar shouldn’t be flying under the radar. His 2024 F2 season featured four wins and four additional podiums en route to a second-place finish in the points standings. However, his signing took place — or was announced, at least — somewhat late in the offseason and placed the French driver in the middle of a saga that future generations will likely refer to as “The Ballad of Daniel Ricciardo.”

Be that as it may, Hadjar kept his nose clean through Q1 and finished best of the rest in Q2, less than a tenth of a second behind Gasly who held the cutoff time. It’s hard to say what will happen in Hadjar’s future, especially given the history of volatile lineup decisions from his current employers, but he has undoubtedly made the strongest opening statement of the 2025 rookie class.

Now, he just has to back it up in the race.

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Alex is the IndyCar Content Director at Frontstretch, having initially joined as an entry-level contributor in 2021. He also serves as Managing Director of The Asia Cable, a publication focused on the international affairs and politics of the Asia-Pacific region which he co-founded in 2023. With previous experience in China, Japan and Poland, Alex is particularly passionate about the international realm of motorsport and the politics that make the wheels turn - literally - behind the scenes.