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Sebastian Vettel made full use of the virtual safety car to sneak in front of Lewis Hamilton and steal a victory from the frustrated champion to win Formula One’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
The Mercedes engine’s infamous ‘party mode’ that delivered Hamilton a blistering pole lap on Saturday could do little once Ferrari’s Vettel nosed ahead when re-entering from pit-lane midway through the race at Albert Park.
Pole-sitter Hamilton had appeared set to coast to victory with a clear pace advantage but the race turned on its head with the safety car, which was called after Romain Grosjean’s Haas failed and rolled to a stop at turn two.
In another bonus for Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen finished third, fending off Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and leaving the unlucky Australian still searching for a first podium in his home race.
Four-time world champion Vettel claimed a 48th overall win and his third in Melbourne following his victories at Albert Park last year and in 2011.
It was the 100th podium of Vettel’s career and it came in his 200th F1 race. The German becomes the fourth driver to claim 100 podium finishes, joining Hamilton, Michael Schumacher and Alain Prost.
“It was needless to say we got a bit lucky with the timing of the safety car,” said the German, who had started from third place and inherited the lead when Hamilton and Raikkonen had pitted earlier in the race. “It’s not the easiest track to pass.”
For Hamilton, the result was a bitter pill to swallow and had echoes of last year’s race. Vettel also managed to re-enter in front of him from the pit-lane in 2017 before burning away to victory while the pole-sitting Briton was blocked by traffic.
This time, the virtual safety car emerged as race marshals removed Grosjean’s car from the circuit and Vettel took advantage of the slowdown to pit and change tyres. He drove out of pit lane just ahead of a confused Hamilton, who got on the radio to ask his team what had just happened.
“Why did you not tell me Vettel was in the pits?” Hamilton asked. “We thought we were safe, but there’s obviously something wrong,” his team responded.
When racing resumed, Hamilton stayed close to Vettel’s Ferrari, trailing by less than a second for more than 10 laps, but was unable to find space on the tight circuit to pass the German.
Just after turning in his fastest lap of the day on lap 47, Hamilton briefly went off the track on Turn Nine and lost precious time, falling nearly three seconds back. He tried to recoup, but couldn’t keep up the pace. He finally waved the white flag in the closing laps to preserve the car for future races. However, with a clear pace advantage over their rivals, he has every reason to remain positive for the races to come.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said his team had miscalculated the margin between the cars during the safety car period.
“We thought we had enough margin,” he explained. “It must have been a software bug in the system that caused us to get it wrong. We are digging deep now to understand where we had a problem.
“We got punched in the face today and we got punched in the face yesterday. And against everybody saying that we are going to run away easy with 20 victories or whatever, and I always said that’s not the case.
“It is very close at the top and I guess this is the message everybody wants to hear.”
Hamilton, who cockily spoke of ‘wiping the smile off’ Vettel’s face with his pole lap on Saturday, battled to keep positive.
“Even now I don’t understand what’s happened. I did everything I believe I was supposed to do,” he said. “I did everything I could but it’s not what anyone expected to happen.
“I’m still in a little bit of disbelief as I don’t really understand what happened. Once I get back with my engineers they’ll do a ‘debrief’ and obviously I’ll find out why.”
Hamilton showed impressive composure during the post-race news conference not to voice his disappointment strongly. But he may have also felt a little silly sitting next to victorious Vettel after his ‘joke’ on Saturday. Hamilton said: “Really last minute I was told that Ferrari was coming out of the pit-lane, I didn’t know Ferrari was in. I think, just disbelief from that moment until ... just disbelief.”
Hamilton’s team mate Valtteri Bottas finished eighth after starting 15th, having taken a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change after a heavy crash during qualifying.
The Finn said: “It was a bit of a frustrating day. I got some points, but not as many as I was hoping for, even starting 15th on the grid. We had a good car, it felt just like in qualifying, the team did a really good job on that. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t make anything out of it because it is so difficult to overtake on this track.
“I also struggled a bit with overheating issues on the engine when I was following other cars, so I had to back off many times. It’s been a disappointing weekend and certainly not an ideal first race, but we still have 20 races to go. We need to learn from this weekend and try again in two weeks in Bahrain.”
Twice world champion Fernando Alonso finished fifth for McLaren in the team’s first race with Renault power, equalling their best result in three dreary years with previous engine suppliers Honda.
Red Bull’s Dutch wunderkind Max Verstappen finished sixth after suffering a full 360-degree spin on the 10th lap that put him out of the running.
A weekend that begun brightly for Haas with a strong qualifying turned sour during the race when Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen ground to a halt with reliability issues before the halfway mark. They were among five cars that failed to finish the eventful opener, including Williams’ Russian debutant Sergey Sirotkin.
