Nice to see a Ferrari at the front again!

Shame about the McLarens, though.

James Allison is a genius. Just goes to show what Ferrari can do when they stop arguing among themselves, blaming and firing people.

FANTASTICO!!!!!

Well done Ferrari. Well done Seb.

A win for Formula 1 today.

Great race, hilarious to hear Hamilton on the radio about not being talked to in the corners.
The floor of the Merc garage will be covered in toys thrown out of a pram tonight....

Ha ha Rosberg made a tit of himself and Hamilton is clearly not happy well done to Vettal and Ferrari for a faultless race!

Great race. Hopefully a competitive season (against all odds!)

It also makes Horner look like a spoilt kid - there's no way the Mercs will be pegged back now, so Red Bull have a mountain to climb

That was noble from Nikki....

I agree. He understands the bigger picture that Mercedes having competition is good for the sport and genuinely seems to welcome it.

The really interesting thing, is that the Ferrari and Mercedes have different strengths. The Ferrari looks to have more straightline performance and great tyre conservation, but Mercedes have more downforce and traction. The advantage should ebb and flow from track to track.

Great race and Ferarri win livened things up a bit, agree RB now have to quit bitching and get their head down. Verstapphen pulled off some great moves for a rookie and showed he deserved his spot also.
Rosberg seems unable to grasp that he needs to drive his own race first and not get so wrapped up in what others may or may not be doing, half the time he seems to ask questions the team are not allowed to answer.

Williams were disappointing, button seemed genuinely shocked to be driving around with any pace at all.
Raikkonen - not sure what to make of him but he needs to sort out his quali or he's going to be stuffed.
Great to see vettel and ferrari working as a unit, Mercedes seemed to fall apart. Over confidence showed it's face in lack of planning as they obviously expected an easy one two.
Lewis looked pleased to have competition outside of rosberg, while rosberg seemed clueless throughout.

It needed the safety car and only some teams trying to take advantage to mix things up or the race would have been much duller.

Role on China!

I'm not too sure about that race. Ferrari have improved which is great but I can't help feeling that Mercedes were not really performing. After Australia we had Mr tiny tears Horner calling for restrictions to curb the dominant Mercedes and he seemed to have quite a few people supporting him. A race later Mercedes are in a race, competing and loosing out. Yes the safety car and tyre call assisted Ferrari but the Mercedes did seem to be sandbagging. Time will tell I suppose but with the same top three drivers as last year I'm not too sure that a competitive season will follow

What is really disappointing is how Williams are starting 2015 much how they started 2014. They just don't seem to be able to come out of the blocks with a fast car. I hope they can develop as well as they did last year but we'll have a few races to wait.

Very interesting reactions all round. Well-aimed point made to Toto Wolff from DC, who said that now nobody can accuse Mercedes of having all their own way. I think it will spur them on.

As many people said before the race, it was all about tyres (though a massively improved Ferrari helped). Merc opted for a 3-stopper without a spare set of Options, whilst Ferrari managed their rubber better in quali and on race day.

Hard to accuse Merc of both overconfidence AND being over-cautious, yet that's how it looks!

I do not for one moment, believe that Mercedes were sandbagging today. It's a rediculous notion. They may not have got the best out of their car, but they were beaten fait and square in a straigt fight today. The safety car played a part, but the fact is that the Ferrari had much better tyre deg. So they were confident in being able to stay out and lap quickly, while everyone around them had to pit. With both cars in clear air, Lulu wasn't able to make much of a dent into Vettels lead, who was controlling things from the front. Even without the safety car, Vettel would still have been very hard to stop from taking the win.

In Melbourne both Merc drivers were flat-out fighting against each other, lights to flag, yet they only finished 30sec ahead of Vettel. On the face of it, that's a big margin, but Vettel was badly held up by Massas Williams in the first half of the race. When Massa pitted early, Vettel was able to comfortably leapfrog him, even though his tyres were old. Also, Albert Park played to the strengths of the downforce and traction of the Merc, whereas Sepang played to the strengths of the Ferrari's straightline speed and ability to keep the rear tyres alive.

I think people need to cut Williams a bit of slack. They've improved from last year, but it's just that Ferrari are finally making use of the incredible resources they have available. Williams compete on around half the budget.

Mercedes didn't deserve to win today. I still think that they're the quicker but the gap is a lot smaller. The circuit is very hard on tyres which obviously helps if you're good on tyres. It's very hard when there's a gap or the cars are on different tyres to be sure who is doing what. There were times in the final stint when Hamilton was closing in but it's impossible to say if Vettel was just managing the gap or going flat out himself.

Whatever, it's really great for the season. It's going to make the 3 days at Silverstone more exciting - especially as I like Hamilton and my daughter is a Vettel fan.

There was a lot of discussion about Mercedes domination after the season opener. Red Bull urged the FIA look to apply the equalisation mechanism which is built into the rules. Helmut Marko even suggested that RED BULL would remove their support and two teams from F1 if the issue was not addressed.

So race 2 and Mercedes make an odd choice to use the softer tyre in the part of qualifying where they would have near zero fear of failing on the hard tyre. This seriously restricted their tyre choices for Sunday. They then choose to make a pit call under the safety car which lost them even more time on their already limited soft tyres.

Both Mercedes ran the majority of this race on the slower 1 - 1.5 sec per lap harder tyre This could well have been an error if it were on one car but to make the decision for both cars looks very suspicious. Either way it has completely silenced the RED BULL chaps who got stuffed by their budget sister team.

Mercedes made the same pit call under the safety car as the rest of the cars they were racing, with the exception of Ferrari. If they hadn't pitted, they would have had to stretch their first stint on the option tyre too long, which would have left them vulnerable later on in the race as they had higher tyre deg than the Ferraris. Mercedes could only get 14 - 15 laps out of the options before they were finished, which means they had to go to the prime tyre to get an extra few laps. Mercedes chose to use a set of options in Q1 yesterday, as they had already planned to concentrate on using the prime in the race, as they could see that their deg was too high from the free practice sessions.

The prime tyre was not 1 - 1.5 sec/lap slower. In the first 3 laps on the tyre, the option was around 0.6 - 0.8sec/lap faster, but after that, the difference equals out with the prime offering a less severe drop-off and the ability to run 5 - 6 laps longer each stint.

Mercedes would not chose to split the strategies, as it would mean that one of their drivers would inevitably lose out against the other. Can you imagine the furore? They chose the best strategy they thought was best for both drivers. If it were a midfield team, then splitting strategies would be acceptable, but not when both of your drivers are championship contenders and you need to be seen to be treating them equally.

I don't think Mercedes would be too bothered if Red Bull upped sticks. Certainly not enough to deliberately throw a race.

As much as I love F1, I don't think it's completely "corruptless" ....I've had this opinion since what happened in Lewis' s rookie season, how he some how threw away the championship, after being odds on with 2 races left....
That was the season this happened....
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_controversy

As a result Mcclaren were excluded from the constructors championship, which I thought was fair enough if they were guilty, they were still in a great position to win the drivers championship....
Up on discussion of this exclusion with a good friend (who actually worked for Mcclaren in Woking), he seemed to think there was NO WAY the powers that be (Ecclestone) would let Mcclaren win the drivers championship after being found guilty of this "espionage".... Sure enough Mcclaren and Lewis spectacularly threw away the championship over the last 2-3 races....

Ever since that season I don't think I've had the same love for F1, saying all this I think Vettell was superb today, and if he can challenge the mercs in the coming rounds as he did today, it makes for a far more exciting season than we've had for a long time...

The problem with Merc's strategy was that they did less running on the (quicker for them - it was clearly Lewis's preferred tyre - as indicated by the radio traffic) option tyre. The early pitstop also put them behind slower traffic which they had to use up their prime tyres' peak performance trying to pass. All this time, Vettel was making his escape. Merc may have been counting on Ferrari stopping at the safety car too.

Still, there was some good racing up and down the field. Both Verstappen and Bottas did well, the McLarens made progress, the RBs looked poor and Manor at least did some laps. Not sure what Perez was thinking.

I don't for one minute think they threw the race on purpose

I merely suggest that they wanted to appear less dominant so chose a strategy that would best achieve this outcome. I think that Mercedes still expected to win too but by a smaller margin.

Last year a Red Bull took the first race, before being excluded. The team then bagged a few podiums and three more wins. They achieved a third place in the driver’s championship and second in the manufacturers but the Mercedes was always dominant.

I am sure by the end of the year we’ll know “for sure” if the Ferrari is as competitive as it currently seems. I do hope the Ferrari win is not a flash in the pan and that they and others can challenge and make the season more interesting. At the moment I’m not that optimistic though

The problem was that Mercedes didn't have the option of running the softer tyre as long as they would have liked and certainly not as long or consistently as the Ferrari. If they hadn't pitted duriung the safety car, Vettel would still have had them later on anyway, with his better tyre conservation. With regards to Lewis' radio chatter about him being on 'the wrong tyre', actually what he really should have said was; 'I wish my tyre deg was low enough to use the last set of used options on my last stint'. The BBC website had the live timing sector times and even in free air, Lulu could only make inroads into Vettel when he had the overlap on fresh rubber.

I do agree though, that the Mercs making their way through traffic of the midfield who didn't stop, did cost them time. But, only Ferrari had sufficient pace and low enough tyre deg to not stop and make Mercedes pay. Also, let's not forget that Kimi was dead last after his puncture and still finished 4th, 17sec ahead of Bottas.

The next race in China is a mixed circuit, with some technical sections, a couple of fast corners and three long straights. A clearer picture will emerge. I do think that the Merc is still the overall quickest package on the grid, especially over one lap where it's downforce can extract more from the tyre. But, Ferrari are a genuine threat, make no mistake.

All three of Ricciardo's 2014 victories were inherited either due to Merc mechnical issues (Canada), driver collisions (Belgium), or inclement weather conditions (Hungary). Today, Ferrari beat Mercedes on performance, in dry conditions.

Well, Lewis has already said that they didn't expect so many cars to stay out. They also said pre-race that a 3-stop strategy was only 2 seconds slower than a 2-stop. They basically gave away the lead in that pitstop and never got it back. I doubt they'd do the same thing again given the option.

I'm absolutely clear the Ferraris are a genuine threat (make no mistake about that either ) but I don't think Merc did the best strategy they could have in the circumstances.

Still, I'm looking forward to the rest of the season. I'd love to know what Rosberg is thinking at this point too...

Good to see Ferrari win today. Vettel sounded like he'd won the championship for the first time

What I don't get is the engineer telling LH, after his last pit stop, that he will catch SV with 5 Laps to go?? Somehow they thought he would lap 1.5 secs quicker??? On the harder tyre?? Why would they tell him that when it was never going to happen ?!

I was surprised by that radio message as well especially when I saw he was on the harder tyre on his last stint! Even allowing for the lighter fuel load he simply wasn't quick enough to make up that sort of deficit in 10 laps. Maybe they were trying to seem positive after realising the strategy wasnt going to pan out?

Well yes and no. They beat them but it was on strategy more so than performance. Mercedes had a 20+ second deficit after the safety car and they never got it back. They both closed in but ultimately couldn't do it, especially on the harder of the two tyres.

Like I say lets see a few more races and we'll soon know if it is as close as we all hope.

This is being mentioned on Joe Saward's site:

Save F1!

Futile, but heartfelt.