Mercedes thought it would keep the lead in Melbourne

Mercedes was beaten by the Team Ferrari at the Australian GP. While Lewis Hamilton was leading the race, the Briton had to go through the pits to avoid the “undercut” attempted by his direct pursuer Kimi Räikkönen (Ferrari).

The race was restarted by the double retirement of the Haas of Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen. The Virtual Safety Car implemented by the race management allowed Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari) to lose a minimum of time when changing tires and gain the upper hand over the first W09.

“We thought we had a margin of three seconds. We're going to have to check the computer calculations, which is what we're doing now. If we have a software problem, we need to fix it. We needed a 15 second lead and we only had 12. We thought it was enough, but it wasn't.", explained the Austrian on Sky Sports.

“It’s a bit like a slap in the face to lose the race like that after leading, added the executive director of Mercedes Motorsport on Canal+. There are three teams that can currently win races. It will be much harder this year. The gaps have become much tighter than in the past. We haven't seen a lot of overtaking, especially with Max (Verstappen) who has a habit of being a little crazy. This is due to both the circuit and the cars. »

Discover the analysis of the Australian Grand Prix carried out by our special correspondents in issue 2158 of AUTOhebdo, available from Monday evening in digital version on all platforms, and from this Wednesday on newsstands.