Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel yesterday won the Australian Grand Prix Formula One World Championship for Ferrari to dash Mercedes’ hopes of extending their dominance into a fourth successive season.
The German cruised to his 43rd race victory with a 9.9 second gap to Mercedes’ runner-up Lewis Hamilton, with the Briton’s new team mate, Valtteri Bottas, finishing third.
It was Vettel’s fourth win for Ferrari and his first since the Singapore Grand Prix in September 2015.
Photo: AFP
That win in Singapore was also the last time Ferrari had topped the podium, but Vettel’s victory at Melbourne’s Albert Park underlined the huge leap in performance made by the team, who were encouraged by their cars’ pace and reliability in winter testing.
“It’s a long, long way ahead, but for now we’re just over the moon ... It was a great race, I enjoyed it,” Vettel said in a podium interview with former Red Bull Racing team mate Mark Webber.
Vettel’s 2007 championship-winning team mate Kimi Raikkonen finished fourth, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen one behind.
Vettel, who started alongside pole-sitter Hamilton, had said after qualifying he hoped for a good start to reel in Mercedes.
Hamilton got away smoothly and having broke clear of Vettel, was first to pit on lap 18 to change tires.
However, it proved a turning point in the race as he rejoined behind Verstappen and was then unable to pass the feisty Dutch teenager, Hamilton venting on the team radio as Vettel forged ahead.
The German pitted at lap 23 and exited the pit-lane just in front of Verstappen, who was still gamely holding off Hamilton.
Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport executive director Toto Wolff was enraged, with television pictures showing him pounding his fist into a desk in the team garage.
Vettel showed the reigning constructors’ champions a clean set of heels and quickly established a six-second gap, which widened as the race went on.
It was a tough day for Red Bull’s home racer Daniel Ricciardo, who started off with a five-grid penalty for a gearbox change and then had to retire with smoke billowing from his car on turn three midway through the race.
In between, his car came to a stop on the way to lining up at the starting grid and he was forced to join the race from pit-lane two laps behind after frantic work in the garage to fix a sensor problem with his gearbox.
Six other cars failed to finish, including McLaren Honda’s twice champion Fernando Alonso and Renault Sport’s Jolyon Palmer.
In a sign of how far McLaren have fallen, a retirement for Fernando Alonso and a last-place finish for team mate Stoffel Vandoorne exceeded expectations for the embattled team.
The Honda-powered cars had a dreary winter testing with slow times and an assortment of reliability problems, and the same problems played out through the race weekend in Melbourne for the England, Woking-based outfit.
However, twice champion Alonso, who qualified 13th on Saturday, battled up to 10th and for a while was in contention to grab championship points, but all came undone for the Spaniard as his car halted with an apparent suspension problem only a few laps from the finish.
“A suspension failure I think at the end is what happened and it stopped us finishing the race,” he said. “[The race] was pretty good, I think. I was driving one of my best races so far. We were surprisingly in the points all the race long.”
“Also we had to do a huge fuel saving which was hurting us a lot, but we were able to keep the position. As I said, a little surprised to be so [high] up, but at the end we didn’t finish and definitely we need to be more competitive very soon,” he said.
Alonso’s rookie teammate Vandoorne was last of the 13 cars that finished, having been lapped twice by Vettel.
That the Belgian was able to crawl over the line might have been cause for a small celebration for McLaren, whose relationship with Honda has become increasingly strained by continuing struggles.
Alonso had little doubt where McLaren lay in the Formula One pecking order, even next to other battling teams like Stewart-Haas Racing and Sauber F1 Team.
“I think we are last,” Alonso said. “That’s the performance we have now. We were 10th [today] because the qualifying lap we had yesterday was extremely good.
“The start, I was lucky to gain one position and the [Romain] Grosjean retirement gave us the second one. I think in normal conditions in the normal circuit we should be last,” he said.
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