Vettel starts title defence with win in Australia

Sebastian Vettel won the Australian GP at Albert Park, Melbourne and started his title defence in best style. The German was most of the race in the lead, just losing it for some laps with the visits to the boxes for tyre changes. The podium was completed by Lewis Hamilton and Vitaly Petrov.

The Red Bull driver got his 11th career win and his first in Australia. The German used to his advantage the clean side of the track on the starting line to be the fastest and to stay ahead on lap one. He then dominated and controlled the situation, never having to worry much during the whole race.

Hamilton was the only driver able to really threaten Vettel’s lead, but he was always kept at a safe distance by the Red Bull driver. The Brit had a solid performance and also never had is second place threatened.
Vitaly Petrov was a surprising third place. The Russian made a solid performance and benefited from his team two-stop strategy to stay ahead of Alonso and Webber, both with three stops strategies. Petrov reached his first ever F1 podium, leaving some questions on what might have Kubica done with the R31.

Button had a race with ups and downs. On the beginning of the race he fell to sixth and was fighting for fifth place with Massa. After several attempts to get ahead the Ferrari, Button went around the outside into the fast right-left Turn 11/12 at the end of the back straight, but had to take to the escape road and cut the second part of the corner to complete it. Because of that he received a drive-through which left him in 12th place. He would manage to recover to sixth place, just getting ahead of Ferrari’s Felipe Massa with 12 laps to go. Massa who made a third stop just at the end of the race would fall into 10th place, but managed to overtake Buemi to finish in 9th.

The Saubers gave left a good impression in Australia. Making his debut in F1, Sergio Perez managed to drive his C30 to a final 8th place, just ahead of his team-mate Kobayashi. The Mexican had an impressive run managing to drive the whole race with a single pitstop.

Sebastien Buemi for Toro Rosso closed the top-ten just ahead of Force India’s Adrian Sutil and Paul di Resta. Alguersuari on the other Toro Rosso was 13th. Nick Heidfeld continued his poor performance in Australia only managing 14th place, only ahead of of final finishers Jarno Trulli (Lotus) and Jerome D'Ambrosio (Virgin).

It was a disastrous start of the season for Mercedes GP with both drivers failing to finish in Melbourne. Schumacher had technical problems and came into the boxes on lap 19 . On lap 24 fighting for eighth place, Rubens Barrichello forced overtaking on Nico Rosberg, the drivers collided with Rosberg pulling out with mechanical problems. Mercedes lost its two drivers within five laps.

Fastest Lap: Felipe Massa - 1m28.947s

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