Australian GP: Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton opens F1 season with straightforward victory

Lewis Hamilton made the perfect start to the defence of his Formula One world championship with one of the most straightforward victories of his career in Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix.

It was Hamilton’s 34^th win and his first at Melbourne’s Albert Park since his championship year of 2008.

Hamilton led from start to finish, driving well within himself to push team-mate Nico Rosberg into second place, followed by Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari), Felipe Massa (Williams), the impressive debutant Felipe Nasr (Sauber) and home hope Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull).

But this was a race totally dominated by Mercedes, who didn’t even have to flex their considerable muscles for a one-two result. With Red Bull and McLaren looking in disappointing form, to put it very mildly, it will be up to Ferrari and Williams to make this a competitive season.

But apart from Mercedes the happiest team was probably Sauber, with Felipe Nasr finishing fifth and Marcus Ericsson eighth after the team’s very difficult week fighting legal problems.

It was also an encouraging day for Force India after their recent financial problems, with both their drivers finishing among the points.

There were only 11 finishers, with most of the casualties falling before or at the very start of the race. In fact that was where most of the action was. Last man Jenson Button was the only driver to finish out of the points.

Valtteri Bottas, who had qualified for sixth place on the grid, was ruled unfit by an FIA medical delegate because of a tear in his lower back, and had to withdraw.

With Manor not taking part, that reduced the official starting grid to 17 cars. But there were only 15 there at the start because both Kevin Magnussen and Daniil Kvyat failed to survive their reconnaissance laps.

Magnussen came to a halt between Turns Five and Six with a plume of smoke coming out of his car and Kvyat spun into the gravel with suspected transmission trouble.

There was another casualty on the very first lap when Pastor Maldonado’s Lotus got squeezed into the barriers following a minor collision between the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen. Then, on the second lap, Romain Grosjean retired with apparent mechanical failure. That meant that we had only 13 cars left with the race barely started. And later in the race Max Verstappen (Toro Rosso) and Kimi Raikkonen also dropped out

Hamilton, meanwhile, had got off to a good start ahead of his team-mate Rosberg. There was brief encouragement for the German when, on lap eight, he put in the fastest lap to cut Hamilton’s lead to 2.3 seconds.

But Hamilton didn’t have to do much to reassert his authority and once he had completed his solitary pit-stop just before the halfway point in the race the result never looked in doubt. He repeatedly asked his team, “Am I OK on fuel?” but given that he rarely pushed his car to the maximum there was little chance of him running out.