'I'm just embarrassed' - tough introduction for F1 rookies

A full-time Formula 1 drive is what young drivers dream of, but for most of the class of 2025 the Australian Grand Prix was a brutal introduction to the sport.

There are six rookies among the 20 drivers this season, albeit three have already raced in F1 without completing full seasons.

Isack Hadjar, Gabriel Bortoleto, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Jack Doohan, Liam Lawson and Oliver Bearman are the new boys and it is fair to say they had mixed fortunes in Melbourne.

The weekend at Albert Park started off hot, sunny and dry, but it was wet, cooler and changeable for the race, which meant they were thrown in at the deep end.

The reality of the challenging sport was put into perspective pretty quickly.

Before the grand prix had begun, Racing Bulls' Hadjar crashed on the formation lap on his debut.

The 20-year-old Frenchman was utterly distraught and kept his helmet on and his head down while he forlornly made his way back to the pits.

Struggling for words, he told BBC Radio 5 Live: "I'm just embarrassed and I'm sorry for the team, that's it.

"It's not up to me to decide how people think of how good I am, I'm just going to try and come back in China with less silly mistakes."

Australian Doohan, 22, had plenty of attention in front of his home crowd but crashed on the first lap, which brought out the first safety car.

Doohan, who drove for Alpine in the last race of 2024 in Abu Dhabi before signing a full-time contract with the team, said: "I didn't really understand what happened to be honest, whether it was a white line, inters [intermediate tyres] not up to temperature, it just seemed as I upshifted to fourth [gear], I lost the car so it's a lesson learnt.

"I will make sure I spend some time with the boys to understand and make sure it doesn't happen again."

The pressure will continue to weigh on his shoulders, though, as the team's reserve driver Franco Colapinto, who raced for Williams nine times last season, is lurking in the background as a potential replacement.

Another who didn't make it to the end was Red Bull's Lawson, the new team-mate of four-time world champion Max Verstappen.

Lawson is the most experienced rookie with 11 races under his belt in 2023 and 2024, driving for Alpha Tauri/RB before the team rebranded to become Racing Bulls.

The New Zealander, 23, spun off with 12 laps remaining, rounding off what he described as "a really tough weekend".

Mistakes cost him in qualifying where he was knocked out in the first session.

"It's something that I will reflect on and look over everything, from qualifying to the race performance and myself and reset for China," Lawson said.

British 19-year-old Bearman is the third rookie to already have race experience from last season, when he replaced Carlos Sainz in Saudi Arabia for Ferrari. He later two drove two races for Haas, who he is driving for in 2025.

His Friday and Saturday could hardly have gone any worse. He crashed in first practice and the damage led to him missing out on important running in the second session.

It didn't end there. In the final minutes of final practice on Saturday, Bearman lost control of his car and ended up in the gravel.

Hoping to redeem himself in qualifying, his gearbox failed on his first lap out of the pits so he did not set a time.

Bearman did manage to complete Sunday's race, albeit as the last of the finishers in 14th.

Sauber's Bortoleto, the back-to-back F2 and F3 champion, had a promising start to his F1 debut but was another to be caught out by the rain on Sunday.

The Brazilian, 20, outqualified his more experienced team-mate Nico Hulkenberg but crashed late during the race and was forced to retire.

The rookie who bucked the trend was 18-year-old Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Lewis Hamilton's replacement at Mercedes who made his way through the field from 16th to finish fourth.

He did have a spin and was given a five-second penalty for an unsafe release from the pit lane, but that was later overturned.

The Italian became the third-youngest driver in F1 history and was "really happy" with the result and thanked the team for doing a great job at "guiding" him through.

Despite it being a tough day at the office for several of the rookies, they can be comforted by the fact that some of the more experienced drivers were also caught out by the conditions.

Last year's winner Carlos Sainz, now at Williams, crashed on the first lap but was able to provide valuable strategic insight for the remainder of the race, helping team-mate Alex Albon to finish fifth.

Meanwhile, the most experienced driver in F1 history, 43-year-old Fernando Alonso, couldn't avoid the wall either, crashing his Aston Martin to bring out the second of three safety cars.

The F1 calendar takes the teams to China next weekend and the rookies might be relieved to know that sunny and dry weather for all three days is the early forecast.