Did Ferrari win it or Mercedes throw it away?

Formula 1's new era is all about bigger cars, wider tyres, more downforce, and greater performance than ever before.

But this category remains one defined by small margins, and ultimately it was minor details that meant Ferrari rather than Mercedes went home victorious from the first grand prix of 2017.

The picture after Friday practice looked very different. Lewis Hamilton was out on his own in front, more than half a second clear of Sebastian Vettel over one lap, and a second clear over the longer runs.

Mercedes looked in great shape. The W08 appeared stuck to the road and working well again after the tribulations of the second week of pre-season testing, when the floor fell apart and the car's pace suffered badly as a consequence.

By contrast, pre-season pacesetter Ferrari looked a bit lost. Vettel was unhappy with his car's balance, and it seemed the Scuderia had a lot of work to do to rediscover the form that raised expectations of a gloves-off title battle with Mercedes ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.

The first hint of a breakthrough came in final practice on Saturday morning, when Vettel lapped almost half a second faster than Hamilton and the sister Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas.

The SF70H looked a healthier proposition in the hotter weather that prevailed in Melbourne throughout Saturday.

Vettel was in the mix in qualifying too, squeaking ahead of Bottas to claim second on the grid, denied pole as the circuit clouded over only by a sublime last lap from Hamilton, who is the undoubted king of qualifying around the Albert Park circuit.

But Mercedes still held a decisive theoretical edge heading into Sunday's race. Hamilton was on pole and had displayed an advantage of more than two tenths on Vettel in pure pace. Provided he could ace the start, the race would be Hamilton's to lose given how difficult overtaking usually is on this track - narrow, bumpy, and short on straights.

The FIA has acted to make the starts trickier for the drivers to manage this season, mandating a linear response from the clutches that requires drivers to handle the start procedure without the assistance of specific pre-programmed clutch settings.

The drivers appeared to have little trouble re-adapting to 2017's 'manual' starts. This was certainly true for Hamilton, for whom getaways proved a persistent problem last season using the old procedures. The poleman was away cleanly into Turn 1 in the lead, while Vettel was busy resisting a challenge from the second Mercedes of Bottas.

"I had a bit of wheelslip off the line," explained Vettel. "Lewis was a tiny bit better and I had to take care of Valtteri in Turn 1, but I had a decent exit. After that I was really trying to keep the pressure on - to make sure they got the message that we are here, and we are here to fight."

Vettel stayed true to his words, applying relentless pressure to Hamilton through the opening sequence of the race. Over the first 15 flying laps, Hamilton was only 0.043 seconds per lap faster than Vettel on average, despite running in clean air at the front.

HAMILTON VERSUS VETTEL IN THE FIRST STINT

Hamilton produced a burst of pace between laps four and 10, to stretch his lead north of 1.8s, but Vettel was hanging on gamely, and Hamilton was not enjoying the sort of easy ride Mercedes grew accustomed to while leading races of the recent past.

"I was struggling with grip from the get-go," said Hamilton. "Sebastian was able to always answer in terms of lap time. Towards the end [of the stint] I got a bit in traffic and the car started to overheat the tyres.

"I was struggling with grip and it was to the point that I needed to come in. The gap was closing up and I was sliding around. It was my call, because otherwise he probably would have come by anyway."

That seems unlikely, given how difficult overtaking is around this track, but Vettel was homing in on the Mercedes and clearly ruffling Hamilton's feathers.

Hamilton dived into the pits at the end of lap 17, which turned out to be six laps earlier than any other frontrunning car. Mercedes turned Hamilton around in 3.3s and sent him on his way on soft Pirelli tyres. He emerged fifth, behind Max Verstappen's Red Bull.

Hamilton unleashed the extra grip in his new tyres to pump in a new fastest lap of the race on lap 19, but thereafter spent a touch over five laps bottled up behind the Red Bull. Mercedes told Hamilton it was "race critical" for him to pass Verstappen, but Hamilton said there was "no way I can get past this guy".

HAMILTON'S GAP TO VERSTAPPEN WHILE DELAYED

Mercedes gambled on the expectation Verstappen would pit much sooner than he did. Knowing he was safe from any threat from behind, Red Bull gave Verstappen the choice and he chose to stay out until lap 25. During that time, Hamilton leaked a crucial 2.186s to Vettel's Ferrari.

VETTEL'S CRUCIAL GAIN ON HAMILTON

Hamilton had led Vettel by just 0.944s when the Mercedes pitted on lap 17. This meant a 1.242s swing in Vettel's favour, despite Vettel losing time in traffic on his in-lap. Vettel's own stop (on lap 23) was also 0.3s quicker than Hamilton's, thanks to slick work by the Ferrari crew.

All of this meant Vettel emerged just over half a second clear of Verstappen - who briefly had a look at passing the Ferrari around the outside into Turn 3 - with Hamilton four tenths further back.

Vettel completed lap 24 more than three seconds clear of Hamilton thanks to the Verstappen roadblock, and by the time Verstappen eventually pitted that gap was out to nearly six seconds. The race had now swung decisively in Vettel's favour.

"I think Sebastian owes Max a beer, because the fact Lewis couldn't pass him dictated the race," said Red Bull boss Christian Horner. "It gave Sebastian the overcut, and put him in a position to win."

Verstappen's decision undoubtedly played a major role in denying Hamilton a 54th grand prix victory. In hindsight, perhaps Mercedes would have been better off leaving Hamilton to struggle on with his initial stint on ultra-softs, battling to maintain track position in the face of Ferrari's onslaught. We know from the way Ferrari threw away its chance to win last year's Australian GP that holding track position is crucial to success here.

"After the race is always easier, when you rewind and say what we could've done better," said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, who thumped his garage desk in frustration when Vettel emerged in front of Hamilton.

"But I think as a general summary we just weren't quick enough. The Ferrari was the quicker car - the way Sebastian held on to Lewis. We were pushing flat-out and we were just not able to pull away.

"There was the risk of the undercut, and we also thought the tyres wouldn't last. All that led us to the decision to pit to avoid the undercut.

"You're trying to take on board all the information you have - what you see in terms of tyre temperatures and grip levels and sliding, and then of course how the driver perceives it.

"All of that leads to a decision, and in that case it was probably a couple of laps too early. Coming out behind Max, who was fighting his own race, just lost us the race.

"We hoped for Max to pit earlier and then be in free air, so it was a combination of variables that went against us."

Mercedes was naturally fearful of getting jumped by Vettel in the pits, given his ability to stay close to Hamilton without rooting his tyres through that first stint. Nervous about Vettel's pace in clean air, Mercedes would have known it was crucial to get Hamilton into the pits first to protect his advantage.

But ultimately Mercedes blinked too soon. Perhaps it thought Hamilton would trigger a chain reaction of stops among the other frontrunners that never came? Bottas went as far as lap 25 before making his stop, but the Finn drove a more conservative first stint than Hamilton yet was still struggling similarly for grip.

You could argue Vettel risked getting stuck behind Verstappen in the same way Hamilton did had Ferrari attempted to jump the Mercedes with an earlier pitstop, but there's always the chance Verstappen could have made a different decision and done what Mercedes expected he'd do in the first place.

Whatever, once he gets into the lead of a race Vettel rarely lets the opportunity escape his grasp. From there, the four-time world champion was always going to be a difficult target for Hamilton to aim at.

VETTEL VERSUS HAMILTON TO THE FLAG

Mercedes initially switched Hamilton to a two-stop strategy after that early first stop, but reverted to 'plan A' when it became apparent the soft Pirelli tyres weren't really degrading, leaving Hamilton no further strategic wriggle-room.

Hamilton traded tenths with Vettel on occasion through the second stint, when the Mercedes was working the rubber well, but Hamilton complained over team radio that the tyres were "dropping in and out", and he was unable to exert serious pressure on the Ferrari, in fact lapping slower on average over the second part of the race than team-mate Bottas.

"They [Ferrari] definitely have more pace on the ultra-soft tyre," said Hamilton. "I think I had more pace in the second stint, [it's] just I stopped so much earlier that I really didn't know how long the tyres were going to last.

"I didn't want to push to close the gap knowing I couldn't really overtake, and then find I run out of tyres at the end and lose second. Once I came out behind Sebastian, it was really about damage limitation."

Hamilton identified the W08's tyre usage as a crucial area Mercedes needs to correct for future races. Team-mate Bottas, who eventually finished close behind Hamilton in third, also struggled with the ultra-soft tyres and suggested "the warmer temperatures at the start of the race could be part of the reason for our struggles".

The Mercedes always looked more on a knife edge than the Ferrari during pre-season testing, whichever compound of tyre the two cars ran on, and Wolff conceded his team needs a "new calibration" when it comes to understanding how to extract the most from Pirelli's new breed of bigger and stiffer tyres.

"I believe these tyres have a narrow window, and you need to keep them in that window in order for them to perform well," Wolff explained. "If you're below the window, or above the window, you lose performance.

"Eventually the race came towards us. The temperatures dropped a little bit, we changed the tyre, and our pace was absolutely OK towards the end of the race, but not in the beginning.

"I think in the conditions we underperformed. The difference is it was much hotter and clearly we weren't as good in the long runs as on Friday. We need to understand why we didn't have the pace at the beginning of the race, in these conditions, and improve from there."

Interestingly, Ferrari's take on the new generation of Pirellis is different, with Kimi Raikkonen - who endured his own struggles with understeer through the first stint on ultra-softs - suggesting the 2017 rubber is actually easier to work with than previously.

"If I'm comparing to last year they're more easy to switch on and keep in the area," Raikkonen said. "Maybe the area is bigger than it used to be and it will last better, so it's obviously not so critical what you do."

Pirelli has worked to reduce the severity of degradation in the control tyres but it is still there, so good tyre management is still vital. Many teams and drivers also spoke during pre-season about how this new generation of F1 car is highly sensitive to set-up changes.

Perhaps the Ferrari set-up window is currently wider than the Mercedes one; perhaps Ferrari simply found a set-up that works better at certain track temperatures than Mercedes' set-up does; and vice versa for cooler conditions?

Whatever the definitive explanation, the performance gap between Mercedes and Ferrari is clearly small enough at present that fine details can make all the difference to who gains the advantage.

Ferrari feels it is still lacking two tenths to Mercedes in pure pace when the engines are cranked up to the maximum for qualifying, but in race trim it looks as though Ferrari has fractionally the better car - certainly better at using the Pirelli tyres in the particular conditions prevalent in Melbourne on Sunday.

Mercedes could still have won this race, had Hamilton pitted slightly later than he did and Verstappen chosen not to block his path to victory. Equally, Ferrari had at least one of its cars set up well enough that Vettel could pounce when Hamilton and Mercedes slipped up in the heat.

F1 has always been about such details. Ferrari showed in Australia it has taken care of enough of them heading to 2017 that it could be a genuine contender for the world championship, if Mercedes doesn't take care enough of its own.