Briton Norris described his win as “stressful but rewarding”.

The first adjective was justified by the conditions in a madcap, crash-strewn, incident-packed race where one small error can spell disaster – as it very nearly did for Norris himself at one point.

The second adjective was a recognition of the fact that this was exactly the kind of race in which, last year, McLaren had proved less than perfect, and thrown away at least one potential victory, and perhaps another, too.

But in Melbourne they were as perfect as it is possible to be in conditions such as these – even the renowned rain-master Max Verstappen slipped up at one point. And Norris and McLaren came through the chaos unscathed.

The fine line between victory and defeat was underlined by an incident with 13 laps to go that defined the race.

Norris was leading from team-mate Oscar Piastri and Verstappen as a heavy shower of rain approached the track.

It hit as the leaders were negotiating the final corners on lap 44, with 13 to go.

Both McLarens ran wide on to the gravel at the exit of Turn 12, and Australian Piastri then spun through Turn 13.

Norris was able to continue without losing too much time, but Piastri ended up on the grass on the outside of Turn 12, where he sat with his wheels spinning helplessly for what seemed like an age as his hopes of victory at home evaporated before finally rejoining. He fought back to ninth by the end.

Norris immediately pitted for treaded tyres. That decision won him the race, and demonstrated how far he and the team had come since last year – they had planned that they would pit as soon as it rained, and acted decisively on the plan.

Verstappen stayed out and took the lead, but as the rain intensified he lost more time, and Norris resumed the lead when the Dutchman pitted himself two laps later.

Norris said: “It’s so easy to make a mistake, so easy to ruin everything. So quickly it can all have gone wrong within a second.

“Any second of the race, you lock up, you hit the white line wrong, you have a big snap. It was just very, very difficult at times to just not go into a hole or a tyre barrier somewhere.

“That’s a big enough challenge, but then when you’ve got the weather changing and the track conditions changing, knowing when to make the correct decision to change on to a slick tyre and stay out on the inter-tyre, and then even more when I’ve got Max behind me and Oscar behind me, it’s stressful.

“But that’s what makes it rewarding.

“We worked a lot over the winter to prepare for a race like this, because it’s where we threw away a lot of opportunities last season – Canada, Silverstone, where we were not the best at preparing and knowing how decisive we’ve got to be.

“Today we were very, very decisive, calling to box five metres before I boxed. But it was the right call in the end, and that won us the race.”

The race was not over, though.

In the final five laps after the final restart, Norris had Verstappen right behind him. The McLaren was hampered by significant floor damage – incurred either in the previously mentioned off, or in another in those final laps at Turn Six – but he hung on, despite Verstappen being less than a second behind, and having use of the DRS overtaking aid.

The 25-year-old Norris, for whom last season was his first fighting consistently at the front, underlined his inexperience when he said: “That situation was new for me. I’ve not ever led a race with five laps to go with Max behind me, trying to put me under pressure, and in these conditions.

“Maybe Max has had that a few times in his race against Lewis (Hamilton) a lot, and he can just deal with that probably better than I can.

“I’m happy I got through it and stayed calm. It’s something I improved from last year.”

McLaren’s performance was as expected. They were the quickest car all weekend and delivered on a status as favourites that Norris acknowledged both before and after the race was justified.

They earned it in pre-season testing, but Norris said that, while the long run in Bahrain two weeks ago had demonstrated their strong pace, the car was not necessarily as good as some felt it looked there.

The job, he emphasised, was only just beginning, and not all races would be like this.

“The car’s flying,” Norris said. “But we’re going to have races where we are going to struggle.

“[If] we race in Bahrain as round one, I wouldn’t be confident that we could win the race.

“But I’m confident that we’re going to, say, China next weekend, and we can be very, very strong, because we were strong there last year, with not a very good car.”

In the post-race news conference, with Verstappen and Mercedes’ George Russell either side of him, Norris also pointed out that he felt that Piastri’s presence alongside him was partly responsible for McLaren’s strong weekend, making a pointed reference to the rookie team-mates of his rivals.

“Let’s allow a few more races to take place before we start making any (predictions), but we’re the favourites, we are the team to beat, mainly because we have two drivers up there pushing each other,” he said.

“That helps. Do I think me and Oscar working together yesterday, in terms of pushing one another, allowed us to get one and a half, one 10th more than the two drivers here, because their team-mates aren’t as equipped and as experienced? Yes.”

Verstappen and Russell, meanwhile, were talking as if they know that McLaren will take some beating.

Verstappen was reflecting on the fact that he lost 15 seconds to the McLarens over the first stint as the track dried.

“As the tyres started to overheat we had no chance,” he said. “Yet basically McLaren just took off.

“We still have a lot of work to do to fight for a win, but I’m very happy that we are second here. It’s basically one place better than we should have been. We’ll do our best.”

Russell added: “They look pretty good and groovy at the moment, so we’ll see.”

“I still dream,” Alonso says. “Why not? I know 2026 is probably my only chance because 2025 is extremely difficult, but I am still dreaming.

“F1 is for dreamers, probably, because anything can happen. Let’s see.”

It’s a comment that says a lot about Alonso. It talks to his pure love of what he does, and his unwavering belief that, despite the experiences of the past decade and more of his career, fresh success could be just around the corner.

It’s 11 years and counting since Alonso secured the last of his 32 grands prix victories. It’s a year and a half since a promising start to 2023 meant he re-emerged as a regular frontrunner in his Aston Martin, and put together a string of podium finishes – even almost end that long drought – before his team’s form faded.

And at the end of the longest season in history, his early hopes have again been dashed against the cold hard reality of F1 results.

Yet here is Alonso, still believing more wins, and even another championship to add to the two he won with Renault in 2005 and 2006, could be just around the corner.It might not sound like it, but his belief is founded on rationality. Three months ago, Aston Martin shook F1 when they announced the signing of Adrian Newey – the greatest designer in the sport’s history.

The 65-year-old, who announced in May he was leaving Red Bull after 18 years, starts work with his new team in March 2025. The hope – no, expectation – is Newey can work his magic on the car Aston Martin design for the new rules coming into force in 2026, and they can leap to the front.

“Expectations will be high because it is a new car, change of regulations, car made by Adrian,” Alonso said.

“Probably – or at least to start – it will be my last season in F1. Because my contract finishes at the end of 2026. It is the time of delivering and the time of truth. High expectations.”

For Alonso, Aston Martin joining forces with Newey at last is a bittersweet moment, not least because he knows before it starts their time together will be short.

The pair have come close to working together a number of times over the years. Now, Alonso finally gets the chance to race one of Newey’s cars, but it will be when he is 44, coming up for 45. Even Alonso cannot keep going forever.

After deciding not to join Red Bull at the end of 2007, then not reaching a deal to join them when they had further talks in 2013, why does he think he and Newey have finally come together now?

“Destiny,” Alonso says. “It seems like destiny always I was missing the opportunity. But he came now at the end of my career and I will still enjoy as much as I can, try to learn from him.”

We have this mutual respect. We exchanged some messages and spoke from time to time and it seems like we connected always. We never worked together but we were always in the same frequency when we talked in the past. I am looking forward.

“And for Aston Martin it is a big thing.”

Alonso signed a new contract with Aston Martin last spring that will keep him with the team until he is moving into the second half of his 40s – he will turn 45 in July 2026.

He does not like to talk about this, and has said a number of times he feels it’s not relevant – that more downforce on an F1 car is a much more important effect on its lap time than age.

Of course, he would say that. But it is worth talking about. He is doing something that has not been done since the 1950s – driving an F1 car competitively into his mid-40s.

It is, by the very definition of the word, extraordinary, and yet the extraordinary thing is he doesn’t seem recognise it as such.

“No, I don’t,” he says. “I’m not thinking too much on that. Media reminds me from time to time some of the stats and some of the numbers but for me I feel like I was 25 or 30 and I keep racing in F1.

“I don’t feel it. I feel motivated, I feel fresh, I feel fit to drive and to do the same training I was doing for 20 years now, because it is the same routine more or less.”

So why does he think he has been able to do this, and no-one else, yet, has been able, or offered the opportunity, to do the same?

“I think because my discipline of working and training and dedicating myself to F1 has been quite extreme,” Alonso says, “and the results maybe are paying off.

“I have never been missing any test session or any debrief or any factory time or training. I have never been out or partying too much.

“Maybe the results are coming now in my 40s, but the starting point was at 20s or 30s, when you need to dedicate yourself to F1 for a long period of time to achieve some results later on.”

As drivers age, what normally slows them down is that they lose the desire to do it. It ceases to matter so much.

Time passes and the importance of shaving the last milliseconds off a lap time – of driving around in circles, as Niki Lauda famously put it when he retired for the first time mid-race weekend in 1979 – diminishes. So too does the desire to make the many required sacrifices, in terms of physical commitment, in terms of time away from family.

With Alonso, though, the flame of love and desire is still burning strong. Why?

“Because I never had a good car that I could dominate something, apart from my season with the world endurance championship with Toyota [in 2019-20].

“That season I realised how wonderful it could be to have a dominating car in F1 as well, because you could achieve so many results and drive as you wish.

“All my career I have been driving cars that were maybe not the best in that moment, even my two World Championships. In 2005, the McLaren was the fastest car but their reliability was bad so we compensated with that and won the championship.

“And then in 2006, they were very similar but the Ferrari and Michael [Schumacher] had a little bit too many DNFs, especially in Japan at the end of the year, and I won the championship.

“I keep delivering and motivated and I am not [feeling like I am] driving in circles because every year I still have the hope that will be the season I could have a fast car.”

Does he worry other people might look at his age and lose faith he can do the job before he does?

“Not worry,” he says. “I know it is happening and it will happen. There is a younger generation of fans and followers who are just into F1 and they don’t know much about me and they never saw me winning a race or they go just by the results.

“But I still have the hope I can prove them wrong and have a fast car in 2026.”

Is he still driving as well as ever, as he insists? It’s hard to be sure when a driver’s team-mate is not close to his level, as Lance Stroll is not with Alonso.

But the underlying indicators are in Alonso’s favour. He scored the bulk of his points in the first few races of the season, when he was qualifying regularly in the top six.

On average, the Aston Martin has been the fifth fastest car – and they have finished fifth in the constructors’ championship. But over the second half of the season, their form has tailed off to the extent the car has been the third slowest on the grid.

Yet Alonso has still finished the season as the highest driver in the championship outside the top four teams. And he has nearly twice as many championship points as the next driver in a midfield team.

“My self-confidence will always be there until there is one day that I don’t feel comfortable in the car. If I feel – as you touch on – slower than my team-mates, or slower than what I think is possible with the car, if that date arrives, probably I will raise my hand and stop racing, because I will not enjoy any more.”

All of which begs another question. The 2026 Aston Martin will be designed by Newey and the team of big names owner Lawrence Stroll has collected to work with him, and designed and built in the new factory and wind tunnel in which the Canadian billionaire has invested in recent years.

If it is as competitive as the team hope it will be, might he want to stay on longer?

“If 2026 is running smoothly and we are having a good time and there is a possibility to race one more year, I will be open [to it] for sure,” he says.

“I will not close the door beforehand. But I will not start thinking that and I will take every race as if it is my last race and I will enjoy every second.”

The world champion was ordered to complete some “work of public interest” for the transgression, a punishment he described as “ridiculous” at the time.

Governing body the FIA said after the season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that Verstappen’s duty would coincide with its prize-giving in the African country’s capital next week.

The top three drivers in the F1 world championship are required by regulation to attend the end-of-season FIA prize-giving ceremony. Verstappen’s punishment has been tagged on to the mandatory trip.

A statement said: “While in Kigali, (Verstappen) will undertake some work with junior competitors as part of the grassroots development programme organised by the Rwanda Automobile Club (RAC).

“The activity will involve an FIA affordable cross car which was built locally in Rwanda by the RAC from blueprints provided by the FIA.

“Verstappen’s penalty, along with a fine for Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc for a similar offence at the Mexico City Grand Prix, led the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association to publish an open letter asking the FIA to treat them like adults.

The letter also criticised the FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, who has caused widespread dismay in F1 at his actions this year, for his “tone and language” when addressing the topic.