Whichever way you cut it, Ferrari should have won the Australian Grand Prix. Once Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen led Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton into the first corner it was Ferrari's race to lose, and come the chequered flag it had done just that.
The race hinged on the red flag period following Fernando Alonso's huge accident on lap 17. Up to that point Vettel had been extending his lead, and even though Raikkonen was shuffled back by being kept out too long on his first set of tyres, Vettel's lead continued to grow as he made use of super-soft tyres in his second stint compared to Rosberg on softs. If the race had played out without the stoppage, both Vettel and Rosberg would have switched to soft tyres for the final stint and, barring any mistakes in the pit stops, Ferrari should have stayed ahead for victory.
Instead the race was blown wide open by the red flag, which threw the strategists of both teams the wild card of a free tyre change ahead of the restart. The option was either to stick on the tyres fitted at the previous pit stop and remain on the strategy mapped out at the start of the race (Ferrari's choice) or twist by putting on a set of mediums to go until the end (Mercedes' choice). The mediums were the most unloved of the three compounds in Melbourne and were expected to gather dust at the back of the garage during the race. However, under the new tyre selection regulations, all teams were forced to carry a set into the race and the red flag meant they came into play.
Ahead of the race, Pirelli's prediction for the ultimate strategy was to run super-softs until lap 16, switch to softs until lap 37 and then run a second set of softs until the end of the race on lap 58 (Rosberg's original strategy). By contrast a single stop strategy with a switch from super-softs to mediums on lap 17 was expected to be 18.9s slower in terms of pure pace. The red flag meant the race was effectively being shortened to cancel out the first stint, and in the new truncated Australian Grand Prix (37 laps once racing resumed) teams had the choice of a one-stop strategy using the faster, softer compounds or a no-stop race using the mediums.
Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene explained his team's decision after the race saying it felt the need to remain aggressive. No doubt the strategy looked quicker on paper with a clear track, but it had two caveats. The first is that the super-softs were required to last for 17 laps, which was further than anybody had taken them over the weekend. The second was that it needed Vettel to overtake any cars that had opted to take the no-stop medium route. On the plus side, Vettel would have faster rubber to restart the race, allowing him to exploit the empty track ahead of him. After the pit stop he would also have fresher, softer tyres to attack the drivers on the medium tyres.
But Mercedes, with reams of data on the medium tyres after spending most of winter testing on the compound, saw things differently. It fitted Rosberg with the white-striped rubber and sent him out until the end -- a strategy it had already decided to adopt with the out-of-position Hamilton before the red flag came out. The worst-case scenario was that Rosberg would lose the lead in the closing stages as Vettel came through on the softs, but at least he would have the chance to defend his position. What's more, Hamilton's first stint behind Max Verstappen had proved how difficult it was to overtake a well-sorted car at Albert Park and therefore defending track position was preferable to going on the attack on the softer compounds.
Just six laps after the restart it became clear Mercedes was on the stronger strategy. Vettel had built a gap of four seconds but from lap 26 onwards it started to shrink as the performance of his super-soft tyres degraded. He held on to the lead until his pit stop nine laps later, but any advantage Ferrari had hoped to gain from the super-soft over Mercedes on the mediums was whittled down to 1.4s when he came into the pits for soft tyres. He fought back to challenge Hamilton for second place in the closing stages, but the benefit of track position over faster tyres -- and therefore Mercedes' strategy over Ferrari's -- was clear as Hamilton kept Vettel at bay.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but Ferrari's decision not to fit mediums at the red flag is still a hard one to understand. It may have felt Mercedes was so strong on the mediums that Vettel would not have been able to keep Rosberg behind, but at least he would have had a chance to defend rather than losing the position in the pit stop. Had Ferrari gone for mediums and Mercedes gone aggressive with a soft-soft strategy following the red flag, Rosberg would have had to pass Vettel twice to make it work -- possible but not guaranteed.
Throughout the race, track position proved key and most overtaking manoeuvres were a result of big discrepancies in car or tyre performance. The fact Ferrari did not recognise that is surprising, but perhaps symptomatic of a team not used to having the faster car in race trim. Mercedes, meanwhile, made the right choice based on the hard work they had put in over testing and fully deserved the victory as a result.
For Formula One it provided an exciting race, but one that could have been even better if Rosberg and Vettel had engaged in a straight fight on mediums for victory. It was also vindication of the new tyre regulations, which have the potential to offer up very different strategies options in the event of a safety car or changing track conditions. All of which sounds like a recipe for a brilliant season of Formula One to come.
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