Nico Rosberg continued his run of victories from 2015 as he added a fourth consecutive win with victory at the 2016 season-opening Australian Grand Prix for Mercedes, kicking-off his title bid.
Rosberg finished eight seconds clear of team-mate Lewis Hamilton in second, who started on pole but dropped back to sixth at the start of the race following a terrible start for the Briton.
It was Sebastian Vettel who emerged the early leader. A brilliant start for the Ferrari driver saw him jump both Mercedes cars and he looked good for victory as he pulled away in the opening laps.
However a strategy error cost Vettel a potential win as a horrific crash involving Fernando Alonso and Esteban Gutierrez resulted in the race being red flagged for a period of 20 minutes whilst the track was cleared of debris.
The McLaren and Haas driver walked away unharmed – a surprise considering the sizeable accident.
Ferrari chose not to replace Vettel’s tyres during the lull in activity, whilst Mercedes switched Rosberg’s, which eventually played out as the right move. Rosberg got ahead of Vettel and stayed there until the end.
Meanwhile Hamilton also got ahead of Vettel playing the long game with a two-stop strategy compared to Vettel’s three. The Briton came under immense pressure in the closing laps, but a mistake from Vettel at the penultimate corner saw the Ferrari driver run wide and onto the grass, dropping him a couple of seconds back and leaving Hamilton with some room to breath.
Daniel Ricciardo finished fourth and at one point looked as though he might manage a podium had his tyres not given up, forcing him to make a late stop which dropped him behind the Williams of Felipe Massa who he quickly overhauled.
Romain Grosjean handed Haas their first points on their debut with an amazing sixth placed finish. The Frenchman drove brilliantly to fend off a chasing pack which included Nico Hulkenberg, seventh, Valtteri Bottas, eighth, and the two Toro Rosso cars with Carlos Sainz leading Max Verstappen.
Six cars retired from the race including Alonso and Gutierrez following their crash. The McLaren driver hit the rear of Gutierrez’s Haas and rolled his car before coming to a rest in the gravel trap upside down.
Kimi Raikkonen suffered what looked like a turbo failure and had been running third at the time.
Meanwhile Rio Haryanto and Marcus Ericsson suffered unspecified technical failures and Red Bull’s Daniil Kyat didn’t even start the race as his RB12 stopped on the formation lap.
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