Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel made a perfect start to his 2011 Formula One Championship with an invincible win(25 points) in the Australian Grand Prix. McLaren's Lewis Hamilton finished second(18 points) ahead of Vitaly Petrov joining him third(15 points) on the podium. The podium finishers made use of two stop strategy.
Ferrai's Fernando Alonso finished fourth(12 points), Vettel's teammate Australian Mark Webber finished fifth(10 points), as both used 3-stop strategies. Mclaren's Button was sixth(8 points), falling short in his bid to win the race for a third consecutive year. Earlier, he was given a drive through penalty after using a slip road to pass Ferrari's Felipe Massa, and that cost him a shot at third.
Sauber's Sergio Perez made an impressive seventh in his first grand prix and he did so with a remarkable one pit strategy. He finished well ahead of his teammate Kamui Kobayashi who finished eigth. But both of them were later disqualified for rear wing infringements. As a result of this disqualification, Ferrari's Felipe Massa, Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi, Force India's Adrian Sutil and Paul di Resta took the last four positions orderly.
Drivers who failed to finish the race were:
Michael Schumacher
Rubens Barrichello
Heikki Kovalainen
Nico Rosberg
Pastor Maldonado
The next F1 race is the Malaysian Petronas Grand Prix on April 10th.