Sebastian Vettel has said Ferrari is "over the moon" to have won the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, beating pole sitter Lewis Hamilton to victory on Sunday.
Vettel qualified on the front row of the grid for the first time in over a year and maintained second position during the first stint of the race, keeping Hamilton in check, before leaping the Briton through the pit stop phase, courtesy of a later service and traffic for his rival.
Vettel descibed his first win since the 2015 Singapore GP as "unbelievable" and thanked his team for the progress made over the winter.
"Unbelievable! Thank you everyone," said Vettel. "It was a fantastic grand prix, quite mad, in a positive way, when I was coming back to the pits and people were running on track, unbelievable.
"Thanks for the support, it’s what we needed. It's been a hard winter, the whole team has been working really hard. The guys didn’t get much sleep, car really behaving well, incredible fun to drive, a beautiful day.
"There’s a long, long season ahead but for now we're over the moon, we're just happy."
Vettel admitted he wasn't happy with his start after he almost lost second place to Valtteri Bottas, but pressed on after that and piled the pressure onto Mercedes.
"Incredible race. At the start I was not entirely happy, I was a bit too nervous, had a bit of wheelslip off the line, Lewis was a tiny bit better then I had to take care or Valtteri into Turn 1 but had a decent exit, then I was keeping the pressure on to make sure they got the message ‘we are here, we are here to fight’.
"Obviously got a bit lucky when Lewis came out in traffic but was hanging in there, tyres were still good, tyres were still working."
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