Australian Grand Prix talking points: How Ferrari won, why Lewis Hamilton lost and early promise fades for Haas

David Tremayne breaks down everything you need to know about the first race of the season

Sebastian Vettel won the first race of the season (Getty)

Say what you like about the manner in which Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari repeated their 2017 triumph, in the F1 season’s opening race in Melbourne’s Albert Park, he should be commended for two things.

First, he acknowledged the role that luck played in his 48th victory and 100th podium appearance.

And secondly, he refrained from talking about wiping smiles off faces, which he might well have been tempted into after his exchange with Lewis Hamilton after qualifying.

If anyone wiped the smile off anyone’s face, besides Lady Luck, it was Haas.

If they had been able to put wheels on their cars properly, there would never have been a Virtual Safety Car and then a real Safety Car intervention to retrieve Romain Grosjean’s stricken car from the exit of Turn 2, and Hamilton, who was leading up to that point, would have won going away.

Ferrari had every reason to be very happy. Vettel’s win was backed by to Kimi Raikkonen’s third place, giving them 40 points to Mercedes’ 22.

Not bad when, in the final analysis, they only had the third fastest car behind Mercedes and Red Bull.

“I was hoping for better start but it didn’t work, so I had to settle for third and towards the end of the first stint I lost the connection to Lewis and Kimi,” Vettel said.

Vettel on the podium (Getty)

“I was just praying for Safety Car. Then I saw the car stopped in T4 (Kevin Magnussen’s Haas). But no Safety Car. Then I saw the other Haas in Turn 2. The adrenaline was running and we got the Virtual Safety Car, so I came into the pits and luckily I got out ahead.

“In the first stint Lewis faster, and he was fast in the second stint too. I had to let him and Kimi go in the first and not to plan, but I was happier in the second stint. Lewis was pushing hard to keep the pressure on but he never got close enough to do something. This is not a good track to pass on. But it was only in the last five laps that I could enjoy it a bit more.

“Needless to say we got a bit lucky with the timing of the Safety Car, but there were times last year when it worked other way.”

The safety car changed the race (Getty)

Why did Hamilton lose?

Hamilton was gracious in defeat, congratulating Vettel and Ferrari, though still clearly non-plussed how he lost a race he was dominating.

“Honestly, I still don’t understand what’s happened,” he admitted. “I did everything I believed I was supposed to for the win. The Safety Car came out and when I was coming down the straight at really the last minute the team told me the Ferrari was coming out. I didn’t even know it had come in! But in any case, I had the delta speed decided by the FIA to keep to, so I couldn’t have speeded up.

“My feeling was disbelief from that moment to the end, just disbelief. I was so hungry to recover from whatever the scenario was, I was risking it all and could have lost all the points I scored.”

Hamilton was gracious in defeat (Getty)

He had closed to within a second of Vettel when he locked a front wheel on the 47th lap and dropped 2.9s back, then battled the gap down to a second again within five laps.

“But eventually I made the sensible choice. There’s a long, long way to go in the championship, and I wanted to keep my engine healthy as it has another six races to do, so that’s what I had to focus on.”

But what really happened at Mercedes? Did they just luck out, or was there something more behind the surprise that Vettel was able to spring?

Wolff was at a loss to explain the defeat (Getty)

“We were trying to maintain the correct gaps, trying to build enough gap to Raikkonen to avoid him jumping us after pitting earlier than we did,” team boss Toto Wolff said. “Everything was under control. The pace was good. Then we calculated the VSC gap which was needed. Our computer said 15 seconds was the necessary time someone needed to jump us. We were always within this three/four second margin.

“Then suddenly the cameras showed us the pit exit and Sebastian came out in front of us. We have no explanation yet. The software or the system we have been using for five years just gave us the wrong number. Lewis did nothing wrong.”

In retrospect it would have been better for Mercedes to let Hamilton push hard after Vettel when his tyres were fresh after his pit stop on lap 19, and before the Safety Car interventions, and risk having to fend off Vettel late in the race if the tyres’ life was thus compromised.

“But sometimes you get lucky with the Virtual Safety Car and sometimes it bites you,” Wolff said. Today we were bitten.”

So what did go wrong at Haas?

The Haas cars, dubbed the ‘grey Ferraris’ by rivals jealous of the American outfit’s close alliance with the Italian team and a perceived resemblance to Maranello’s 2017 cars, proved very quick in testing and in qualifying.

Valtteri Bottas’ crash and Daniel Ricciardo’s grid penalty left Kevin Magnussen fifth and Romain Grosjean sixth on the grid. And the Dane jumped ahead of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull at the start and looked comfortable in fourth place until his pit stop on the 22nd lap. He got as far as Turn 4 on the 23rd before rolling to a halt.

Then Grosjean pitted on the 24th lap, and incredibly the same thing happened as he stopped by Turn 2, triggering the Virtual Safety Car which changed the face of the race.

It transpired that the left rear wheelnut on the Dane’s car and the front left on the Frenchman’s had each been cross-threaded.

It was a bad day for Haas (Getty)

“It was a disappointing end to a very promising weekend,” team principal Guenther Steiner admitted. “We didn’t tie the wheels on correctly, so we had to stop the cars. It’s racing. It happens, even though it shouldn’t.

“It’s almost unbelievable to have this in one race, and on two cars, while running fourth and fifth. It’s very disappointing. The good thing we can take away from this is that the car is competitive. We just need to get our heads up again, to get well prepared for Bahrain. We’ll focus on that one and get our pit stops sorted out.”

It was an expensive afternoon. Besides the significant (though secret) amount of prize money they lost, they were also fined 5000 euros per car for releasing them in unsafe condition.