The Latest Breaking News from Yuki Tsunoda

The RB team is fielding an all-Japanese line-up in first free practice with Iwasa joining regular driver Yuki Tsunoda in the VCARB 01 in their home round.

Oliver Bearman received a shock call-up to the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix when Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz withdrew because of appendicitis.

RB man Tsunoda broke through the apparent barrier between F1's top and bottom five teams by beating both Aston Martins in Melbourne qualifying. He also outqualified Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton by claiming eighth on the starting grid, just narrowly behind Mercedes' George Russell. The Japanese driver couldn't keep the faster Astons…

As the Red Bull driver suffered a brake problem at the start of the race, his Ferrari rival took control early on and never relinquished it, scoring his first win since last year's Singapore GP.

Instead, Carlos Sainz brilliantly controlled the events Down Under and beat Charles Leclerc for a Ferrari 1-2, showing few signs of struggle despite having surgery on his appendix just two weeks ago.

Heading into this season, the expectation was that a strong campaign for Ricciardo would make him the favourite to replace out-of-contract Sergio Perez alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull in 2025.

Verstappen will start ahead of Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez after the one-hour qualifying session, which was split into three segments with five cars each being knocked out in Q1 and Q2 before the top-10 shootout of Q3. 

Verstappen took pole position with a last-gasp 1m15.915s effort, bettering a still-recovering Carlos Sainz by 0.170 seconds.

Verstappen had not headlined a single session across the weekend so far, but dialled in his pace throughout the qualifying sessions and found a quarter-second advantage at the very end to deny Ferrari a chance at pole.

A 1m17.277s from Leclerc, his second hot lap on soft tyres, handed him a handy advantage over the rest of the field and put him clear of then runner-up Carlos Sainz, who was shuffled down to third by Verstappen's later second soft run.

Fernando Alonso led the pack out of the pits with a large aerodynamic-load measuring device fitted to the front of his Aston Martin and its new front wing, but it was George Russell who initially set the first-place benchmark at 1m30.214s.