Mercedes F1 dominance splits drivers as Charles Leclerc shocked and Max Verstappen ‘not surprised’

Mercedes took a 1-2 in qualifying for the F1 2026 opener at Albert Park

The Formula 1 grid is split on how much it expected Mercedes to dominate qualifying for the 2026 season-opening Australian Grand Prix after George Russell led a Silver Arrows 1-2.

Russell took his eighth career pole after beating team-mate Kimi Antonelli by 0.293s, with third-placed Isack Hadjar close to eight tenths off the pace on his Red Bull debut.

It therefore backed up the favourites tag that was given to Mercedes ahead of this first year of the regulation change, after very impressive pre-season running from the German marque.

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But that was mainly because of its performance in the long runs as Charles Leclerc set the quickest lap time in Bahrain testing, only for the Ferrari driver to then end up 0.809s behind Russell in Melbourne.

“Yesterday I said [the gap was] half a second, now it's [point] eight, so it's bigger than what I expected for sure,” said Leclerc, who will join Hadjar on the second row.

“But it was a very significant gap yesterday already, so... I was very, very impressed this morning with the FP3, the power that they've shown was just crazy in the last lap of George.

“I looked at the data for the first time and I had to re-upload it because I thought there was a problem on the things I was seeing, but apparently not, so it's very, very impressive.”

George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

The advantage Mercedes holds on other teams just keeps increasing with its customer outfit McLaren, which won the past two titles, occupying the third row.

Oscar Piastri will start fifth, 0.862s behind Russell, with reigning world champion Lando Norris one behind, 0.957s off top, and Piastri echoed Leclerc’s thoughts about the Silver Arrows.

When asked about whether his result was expected, he said: “Close, I think. Mercedes, it was a bit of a surprise just how far ahead they are. But I think for us, yeah, maybe a third could have been on the cards.

“Everything's a bit scrappy. But with these cars, you change something a little bit from lap to lap and you end up with more power or less power. It doesn't always go in the direction you expect.

“So, there's plenty for us to learn after that one. But I think we're roughly where we thought we would be.”

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

Piastri even thinks that the gap will increase on Sunday, as day two of Barcelona testing saw Antonelli already conduct a full race simulation before he was comfortably logging 1m36s-1m37s lap times during his long-run programme in Bahrain.

“No one's really done any long runs,” added Piastri. “Mercedes have and they looked even quicker than they did today. We did some short ones, but no one's done proper length stints.”

One driver not surprised by the performance of Mercedes though is Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who even claimed in Bahrain that the Silver Arrows was sandbagging due to the compression ratio furore.

“That's what I said already in Bahrain,” said the four-time world champion, who failed to set a lap time after crashing in Q1. “Let's wait and see in Melbourne and you will see how fast they are. So, for me, that's not a surprise.”

So it all strikes resemblances of when the Silver Arrows nailed the switch to turbo-hybrid cars in 2014 with Russell claiming it's "like the Mercedes from the good old days".

Additional reporting by Stuart Codling and Ronald Vording