“The car is extremely quick, and when you put it together it’s unbelievable. It’s just difficult to put it together.”

Tricky as that lap time may be to achieve from within the cockpit, McLaren’s margin over the rest was best illustrated by watching trackside at the fearsome chicane between turns nine and 10, where the cars approach at 330km/h with a wall just inches from the right-hand side and hurtle through two changes of direction that see drivers subjected to 5.4 G-forces laterally, the highest load they experience all season.

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If there was a checklist of what an F1 driver wants their car to do, McLaren’s MCL39 ticks most boxes at Albert Park’s signature corner sequence. The front end of the car slots into the chicane without even the suggestion of a bobble, giving Norris and Piastri confidence to launch at the turn and know the car will comply to the demands of its operator.

Mid-corner, as the lateral load pinballs from right to left in less than the blink of an eye, it rotates and then stabilises, allowing the driver to square the car up out of the corner and nail the exit with surety. It’s a millisecond-long snapshot of just two corners of Albert Park’s fast and flowing layout, but it’s the most visual demonstration of why the McLaren is ahead of the pack.

With a car so assured, the last thing McLaren needs for Sunday’s 58-lap race are variables, but, as Piastri knows, the local weather can throw an unwanted banana skin into the mix, and potentially bring Verstappen into play.

With heavy rain forecast for Sunday morning – and the prospect of a race starting on a wet track and finishing in the dry for a grid yet to test their 2025 machines in the rain – McLaren’s seemingly inexorable march to the top step of the podium becomes less of a sure thing.

Verstappen’s world championship defence last year was won by dominating the early part of the season when he had the sport’s benchmark car, and opportunistically winning races when he didn’t.

His wet-weather masterclass in Brazil last November, when he went from 17th on the grid to win by 19 seconds in a deluge that tripped up many of his rivals, will be front-of-mind for Norris and Piastri when they gingerly pull back the curtains in their respective hotel rooms on Sunday morning, hoping the forecasters have got it wrong.

“We know how quick Max and Red Bull is in the rain,” Norris acknowledged on Saturday.

“In the wet, there are always some crazy things that can happen,” Verstappen offered with a grin, nurturing any seeds of doubt his bulging career CV would already have planted.

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Wet races in Melbourne are few, with 2010 and 2003 the most recent examples, and a lesson in how to thrive on a high-speed street circuit with walls waiting to bend cars at every turn – the white lines used for drivers and cyclists for the other 51 weekends of the year offering the grip of a skating rink when damp.

In 2003, McLaren’s David Coulthard saw enough after one lap to pit to discard his wet-weather tyres and vault from 11th on the grid to his second Australian Grand Prix win. Seven years later, Jenson Button – on his debut for McLaren after winning the world championship for Brawn GP the year prior – pitted for slicks at the perfect time and won in Melbourne for the second year running.

It’s likely to be an afternoon of thinking on your feet and being on the right tyre at the right time. McLaren will be hoping their history of success in chaotic circumstances in Melbourne has a third triumphant chapter.

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