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Two victories and three pole positions into season 2024 and the experts have all but handed the title to defending champion Max Verstappen. Meanwhile, the lawyers have descended on Formula One like never before.

But to the swathes of motorsport fans squeezed into the leafy Albert Park track in Melbourne, these intercontinental ructions meant little. Instead, on this mild Saturday, tens of thousands of them streamed, bobbed and weaved towards the main stage adjacent to the lake.

“Who wants to see Daniel win?” the MC asked, eliciting a mostly underwhelming response for Australian idol Daniel Ricciardo. “Who wants to see Oscar win?” she tried again. A roar for Melbourne local Oscar Piastri erupted from the crowd – sprinkled with more orange than anywhere outside Zandvoort – as if anointing a new national hero.

Fans are still looking where in the 2024 grid a contender might emerge behind the dominant Red Bulls, but off the track there have been more surprises than a Mercedes wind tunnel.

A Red Bull employee’s complaint over inappropriate behaviour against the team principal, Christian Horner, was rejected in February. The employee has appealed and the matter remains afoot. The complaint, and the handling of it, fuelled speculation in recent weeks of a power struggle in the world’s fastest garage. Formula One champion Verstappen – whose parents divorced in 2008 – said on Thursday that Red Bull was a “second family”, offering little to allay paddock gossip.

McLaren’s Melbourne-born driver Oscar Piastri signs autographs for fans at Albert Park ahead of the Australian Grand Prix. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

Much of the motoring media has focused on what this saga means for the defending champion’s future, and his role in the great driver merry-go-round that is set to define much of this season. However, the complaint is just one of a series of integrity scandals testing the institution of Formula One.

The sport has leveraged its Netflix success and soap opera-like character to build an increasingly diverse following, including in Australia. Two in five of Albert Park’s record crowd last year were women, up from fewer than one in four in 2019, and with Formula One’s growing status comes new expectations. When asked about the integrity issues consuming the sport, McLaren chief executive Zak Brown said pointedly on Friday, “we’re living in 2024, not 1984”.

But look around, and it’s not immediately obvious. The drivers are all men. The vast majority of the paddock is male. The press box, similarly gendered. Governing body the FIA is largely devoid of women in leadership and governance roles, although Natalie Robyn was brought in as chief executive in 2022. At the end of last season, the FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, had to defend historical sexist remarks uncovered from an archive on his personal website.

The head of the all-female F1 Academy series, Susie Wolff, has filed a criminal complaint in a French court against the FIA for statements made about her in December, that she claimed were rooted “in intimidatory and misogynistic behaviour”. Lewis Hamilton, whose boss at Mercedes is Wolff’s husband, Toto, offered his support on Thursday to Susie and highlighted the sport’s ongoing challenges with gender and inclusion.

Susie Wolff, head of the F1 Academy and wife of the Mercedes principal Toto Wolff, is one of the few women in a leadership role in a Formula One world still dominated by men. Photograph: Qian Jun/MB Media/Getty Images

The FIA’s problems don’t end there. On Wednesday, Ben Sulayem was cleared of allegations that he had interfered in race results after an investigation by his own organisation’s ethics committee. But it offered little to justify the finding. Two days later, Brown called for a swift resolution to the sport’s multitude of issues as well as “total transparency”.

The episode has prompted Ben Sulayem to issue a defence of his leadership in a letter to FIA members, Associated Press reported on Friday. Complaints against him, Ben Sulayem alleged, were meant to “destabilise me as president of the FIA, but also of questioning the integrity of our respected organisation”.

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The drama away from the track has made up for an absence of drama on it. Red Bull has gone one-two in the first two races and Verstappen has now won nine grands prix in a row, and a scarcely believable 19 of the past 20.

Saturday’s qualifying gave the field little reason for optimism. The Red Bull driver’s quickest trip around the lake was more than a quarter of a second better than the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz, who was returning two weeks after having his appendix removed.

Eight-time Albert Park pole sitter Lewis Hamilton failed to reach Q3, and will start from eleventh. Even further back was Ricciardo, whose best lap in the first qualification session was rubbed out by stewards for exceeding track limits. It’s the first time the 34-year-old has been eliminated in Q1 in Melbourne, and Ricciardo will start close to the back on Sunday.

Piastri’s performance met, but did not exceed, expectations, after his lap was narrowly bested by McLaren teammate Lando Norris late in the session. The Australian will start sixth, alongside Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc on the third row.

Speaking to the press afterwards, Verstappen said he was pleased with another pole, given Ferrari appeared to have narrowed the gap. The turmoil at Red Bull and the challenges at the FIA avoided discussion.

But the words of Sainz, after securing a spot on the front row, echoed into the Melbourne evening. Asked about his still-healing stomach, the Spaniard replied: “Everything feels a bit weird.”

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