How Ferrari threw away Melbourne victory

Formula 1 is a cruel game, where luck often plays a part in whether you succeed or fail. But you can also earn your own luck with smart thinking and hard work, and you certainly cannot get away with poor decisions and sloppy strategy.

Ferrari should be kicking itself after this race. The 2016 F1 season began against a backdrop of handwringing over a failed experiment with the qualifying format, and the likely prospect of yet another one-two finish for Mercedes, yet within yards of the start Sebastian Vettel had thrust his SF16-H between the two silver cars and delivered what the decision-makers were hoping for all along.

For the first 12 laps or so this looked like a steal for Ferrari. It came to Melbourne hoping to topple the Mercedes hegemony that has dominated F1 since 2014, and led to the sort of knee-jerk reactions that changed the qualifying format on the eve of the season.

It was difficult to know whether Ferrari had a real chance of victory coming into the Australian Grand Prix. Recent history suggested not, but the red cars looked strong in testing, neck-and-neck with the silver ones during soft-tyre qualifying simulations, and very close on average over longer runs on the medium.

Vettel was close to splitting Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in final practice in Melbourne, so perhaps he could at least throw his cat among their pigeons come qualifying, if not outright devour them.

That didn't happen. Vettel and team-mate Kimi Raikkonen both qualified well adrift, hampered by using an extra set of new rubber in the early stages compared with their main rivals, leaving them unable to do two runs in Q3.

This meant Mercedes had another clear lockout of the front row of the grid, but it also meant Ferrari was probably closer on pace to the silver cars than it looked on Saturday afternoon's timesheet.

It probably wasn't fast enough to win the race on merit, but that was the case when Ferrari won three races last season too, so anything was possible.

Rather like in Hungary last year, Vettel launched into the lead with a "mega" start as both Hamilton and Rosberg made weaker getaways from the front row of the grid, though Rosberg's was slightly better than Hamilton's and allowed him to get the jump on his team-mate.

A fresh clampdown on radio communication from teams to drivers (though eased slightly before the race to allow for strategy calls) and new rules dictating single-paddle clutches be used on the cars this year put more emphasis on preparation, and theoretically made the start more difficult for the drivers.

"That certainly plays a role because in the past if you would have a bad start off the line for the formation lap you could see how much the slip was," explained Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. "And if you can't adjust it makes a difference.

"Yesterday our practice starts weren't very good, and we weren't sure if this would cause a problem in the race.

"Lewis was a couple of metres worse up to 100m than Nico, but I'm not sure if it was a hardware problem or a software problem, a vibration or a slow reaction. We have to look into it."

To be fair, Hamilton refused to blame technical problems for the wheelspin that spoiled his start, while Rosberg was actually pretty pleased with his getaway from the dirty side of the grid.

He tried to come back at Vettel, but locked up under braking for the right-hander of Turn 1. This failed retaliation meant Rosberg's Mercedes slid wide and inadvertently squeezed the sister W07 of Hamilton onto the outside kerb.

That allowed the second Ferrari of Raikkonen to sneak past both Mercedes into second and Hamilton was delayed enough to allow Max Verstappen's Toro Rosso and Felipe Massa's Williams through too.

"It was quite eventful," said Hamilton who felt the race was "no different to any other" despite the new radio restrictions, clutch rules and extra choice of tyres. "After that I had to fight my way back which was hard work, but I enjoyed it. It was really exciting."

One of Hamilton's biggest strengths as a racing driver is the way he is able to fight back decisively in difficult circumstances, and we saw that fighting spirit on display here.

A puncture on the first lap put Kevin Magnussen's Renault out of position after a pitstop, and when Massa hesitated behind the matt-yellow car coming out of Turn 2 Hamilton used superior momentum to attack.

Massa defended well, but Hamilton cut underneath the Williams on the exit of Turn 3 then swept emphatically past on the outside line through the left-hander at Turn 4. Already that put Hamilton back into fifth with only three laps run.

It took Hamilton a similar amount of time to catch Verstappen's Toro Rosso, but the Ferrari-powered STR11 is not so easy to pass as its Renault-motivated predecessor and before long Hamilton complained on the radio that he was "stuck behind this guy".

The race was slipping away from the reigning world champion and he knew it, so Mercedes decided to roll the dice and go for a 'plan b' strategy.

That meant stretching his first stint on old super-softs to lap 16 then hoping to recover the lost ground by running medium tyres to the end. It wouldn't win him the race, but that tyre choice would prove crucial in deciding who would further up the field.

Meanwhile, Ferrari held the destiny of this race in its hands. Vettel led Raikkonen by a handful of seconds, but the Ferraris simply weren't fast enough around what Vettel described as "one of our worst tracks" to drop Rosberg, who kept a watching brief just over a second further back.

That meant Rosberg stood every chance of jumping Raikkonen after stopping to switch to soft tyres on lap 12, especially when Rosberg rejoined the race just ahead of Nico Hulkenberg's Force India.

Ferrari reacted by bringing Vettel in next time around to ensure the leader didn't lose track position to the Mercedes. Vettel's stop was fractionally quicker than Rosberg's but he had to defend robustly to maintain his advantage on the run to Turn 3 while his cold super-softs woke up.

New leader Raikkonen was not amused to be Ferrari's sacrificial lamb in this race with Mercedes, but that's the inevitable price of being second on the road in an inferior car.

Raikkonen eventually made his first stop on lap 16 and rejoined the race third, moments before Fernando Alonso's McLaren-Honda vaulted the Haas of Esteban Gutierrez on the run to Turn 3.

The violent collision recalled the accident between Jacques Villeneuve and Ralf Schumacher here in 2001, which killed a marshal.

Alonso's barrel roll obliterated his MP4-31, but fortunately injured no one. What it did do was litter the circuit with debris, which caused officials to red flag the race while marshals cleared the wreckage.

It was at this point Ferrari threw away its chance to win the race. Rules allow teams to change tyres before the race resumes, and Mercedes took this opportunity to switch Rosberg onto the medium tyre, which meant he wouldn't need to stop again under racing conditions.

Most other teams followed suit, except for Red Bull, Toro Rosso, McLaren, Manor and Ferrari.

Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Manor went for soft tyres. A gamble certainly, but not unreasonable. After all, it was possible they might get to the end without stopping again.

McLaren went for super-softs on Jenson Button's car. He was buried in the pack, so had nothing to lose.

The fact Ferrari also decided to fit fresh super-softs to both its cars made absolutely no sense at all. Having yet to run either of the mandatory race compounds (soft and medium) all this did was ensure Vettel and Raikkonen would definitely have to stop again, which meant they would certainly concede precious track position.

"There was only one tyre to go on honestly," explained Renault's track operations chief Alan Permane, who reckoned the soft tyre also stood no chance. "It was medium to go to the end. That's what we did with both our cars.

"At the time it seemed really obvious, and of course it was the right thing to do. I was very surprised to see people mix it up and want to stop again because it's not an easy track to overtake on and track position is king."

The race resumed with a single-file restart on lap 20 of 57 and it became immediately apparent that Ferrari was in serious trouble.

Raikkonen's chances went literally up in smoke when his engine caught fire as he retired to the pits on lap 22, while up front Vettel was not lapping quickly enough to give Rosberg's medium-shod Mercedes the slip and buy himself enough time for an extra stop.

Vettel was a chunk faster than Rosberg for the first six laps of the stint but thereafter his pace dropped significantly, whereas the durability of the medium rubber allowed Rosberg to lap more consistently. On average he was just 0.048 seconds per lap slower than Vettel across the balance of the stint, despite running on a tyre two steps harder.

Ferrari called Vettel in at the end of lap 35 to fit soft tyres. The old front left wheel was slow coming off and he rejoined the race fourth, more than 10s behind Hamilton and more than 20s behind Rosberg.

Vettel's only chance to win now rested on whether the medium tyre would give out on the two Mercedes, and whether Daniel Ricciardo - running a superb second after a typically feisty drive - could get his soft boots to the flag.

Hamilton dispatched Ricciardo at Turn 1 on lap 42, after which the Australian dived for the pits for a set of super-softs, safe in the knowledge that fourth place was secure.

Vettel set about using his fresher rubber to close the deficit to Hamilton.

It's clear the medium tyre held up extraordinarily well in this race. At the end of lap 51 the Ferrari was within DRS range of the second Mercedes, but Vettel could make no further inroads and with two laps to go he locked up under braking for the tight penultimate corner and ran off onto the grass.

Game over.

Ferrari team boss Maurizio Arrivabene was pictured shouting in delighted frenzy when Vettel took the lead at the start and conceded he was confident Ferrari would win the race after that. Now, surely, he must be ruing a missed opportunity.

"Unfortunately the red flag came and we didn't win the race," he said when asked to explain the logic of Ferrari's strategy. "On the wall we were confident in all honesty. We were showing a very, very good pace, we were quite comfortable.

"I don't want to take any excuses - the red flag is part of the race so you have to accept it. After the red flag we took a decision. Certain decisions can be right or wrong."

This one was certainly wrong, and meant Ferrari turned a possible victory into a minor podium finish.

This will go down as the one that got away for Ferrari, but not for Rosberg, who drove an excellent race after getting beaten to pole position by Hamilton.

He admitted his car was "on the edge" in terms of managing both brakes and tyres. But the temperatures that began to climb when some rubber lodged in a brake duct mid-race - and almost prompted Mercedes to retire the car - eventually stabilised thanks to brake bias adjustments (with only one degree celsius to spare!), while the medium tyres held together despite having to do nearly 40 laps.

Luck was definitely with Mercedes, but it also made its own with smart calls. Ferrari clearly felt luck went against it in Melbourne, but in reality it paid the price for sloppy strategic thinking at the crucial moment.