Rosberg wins the Australian GP

Nico Rosberg won the Australian GP ahead of his teammate Lewis Hamilton, who had dominated all the weekend sessions. Sebastian Vettel was 3^rd for Ferrari in a race where tyre strategy played a crucial and exciting role.

Daniel Kvyat wasn’t able to start the race for the second year in a row. The race begun with an awful start for the Mercedes drivers, particularly for Hamilton, who fell down to 6^th, while Rosberg was 3^rd behind Vettel and Räikkönen. Verstappen and Massa were in between the Mercedes drivers. Magnussen had a puncture while Gutiérrez reported some power issues in his Ferrari engine. Wehrlein had a wonderful start and went from last to 14^th. It took Hamilton a while to overtake Massa and couldn’t even pass Verstappen before the pit stops. Ricciardo overtook Pérez and Massa on track and did an undercut to Verstappen.

All tyre strategies up to then faded when the race was red flagged following a huge crash between Alonso and Gutiérrez. Vettel was on the lead followed by Rosberg, Räikkönen, Ricciardo, Verstappen, Sainz, Hamilton, Massa, Grosjean and Hülkenberg. Räikkönen‘s engine was on fire shortly after the red flag. The new tyre regulations offered a great variety of strategies: Vettel chose the supersoft, while the Mercedes decided to use the medium and try to go to the end. Ricciardo and the Toro Rossos chose the soft compound.

Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen pitted to change to mediums, but the mechanics weren’t ready for Max‘s pit stop and he lost position with Sainz. Vettel also had a very slow pit stop when he changed to softs. Ricciardo chose the supersoft for the last 13 laps. There was a very intense fight between the Toro Rosso drivers, with Max Verstappen complaining about Sainz not being able to overtake.

Vettel got very close to Hamilton at the end of the race, but he was unable to overtake after making a mistake in the last corner. That meant it was a one-two for Mercedes with Rosberg ahead of Hamilton for the 4^th time in a row. Ricciardo got a fantastic 4^th place in front of his home crowd. Behind him, Felipe Massa finished 5^th for Williams, who haven’t really shown a great pace so far. Romain Grosjean was 6^th for Haas’ debut in Formula 1, which according to him was like a victory for the team. Nico Hülkenberg, Valtteri Bottas, Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen completed the points positions for the Australian GP.

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