article: The podium in Melbourne had a very familiar feel - a Mercedes one-two, with Nico Rosberg leading Lewis Hamilton home after the world champion made a poor start, and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel third - but it was a race Ferrari let slip through their fingers. Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene was asked directly whether he viewed it as a race the team had lost through their own decisions, and he said: "No." Others were less charitable. "They messed it up," said a senior figure from a rival team. After a flying start, Vettel was leading the race until it was stopped after 18 laps following a terrifying accident from which McLaren's Fernando Alonso mercifully emerged unhurt despite barrel-rolling following a 180mph impact with Esteban Gutierrez's Haas. Vettel had only recently stopped to fit a fresh set of super-soft tyres and Ferrari chose to remain on them, knowing there was no hope of making it to the end of the race and that the German would have to make an extra stop. Mercedes took a different route, one that one engineer said was "a no-brainer". Hamilton, stuck in traffic after a bad start, had already been put on mediums at his stop with the aim of going to the end of the race on them. The red flag gave Mercedes strategists, led by James Vowles, the chance to put Rosberg on the same strategy. It was borderline, but they were confident they could make it work. Sure enough, Rosberg lost almost no time in the 17 laps before Vettel's final pit stop and when the Ferrari peeled into the pits, the race was in the bag. In one decision, Ferrari had turned a victory into a third place. Vettel came back at Hamilton in the closing laps but passing was always going to be difficult on this track and it became impossible when he spun with two laps to go. The Ferrari party line was clear after the race. "If you want to look at the glass not half-empty," Arrivabene said. "We were there [with Mercedes]. This is the news." Arrivabene did have a point, though. "The pace in the race was very good," he said. "We need to continue to push because every race has its own story." After qualifying, it would have been easy to jump to the conclusion that the pre-season indications that Ferrari had reduced their deficit to Mercedes were wrong - Hamilton was 0.8 seconds up the road from Vettel and there was an all-Mercedes front row. But there were extenuating circumstances. Ferrari had chosen to do only one run on the softest tyres in the final part of the controversial new qualifying format, preferring to keep a new set of super-softs for the race. It was a fateful call, as it seems to have influenced their thinking on strategy, as we have seen. But it also influenced the final gaps, because both Mercedes drivers did a second run, and both improved. Before that, Vettel was only 0.5secs behind Hamilton - which is twice as close as he
summary: The silver Mercedes train marches on, but the first grand prix of the 2016 Formula 1 season will be remembered as one that Ferrari threw away.