NICO ROSBERG took an unexpected win at the season-opening Australian GP on Sunday.

    Unexpected as he had started behind his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton and was passed by the two Ferrari teammates in the first chicane.

    However, while Rosberg may have not gotten off to the hottest of starts, Hamilton’s was worse, as Rosberg edged him toward the side of the track in the first turn while Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen flew by.

    Hamilton found himself shuffled back to sixth position, and so his team opted to keep him out until Lap 17 when he could pit, put on the harder compound tires and run deeper in the race than his competitors.

    However, this strategy backfired for Hamilton when the red flag flew on Lap 18 for a crash between Haas F1 driver Esteban Gutierrez and McLaren driver Fernando Alonso, who flipped upside-down.

    Under the red flag, all of the drivers were allowed to change tires before the safety car led them around for a restart.

    This meant that all of the drivers essentially were allowed to create a fresh strategy on Lap 19 of 57 (the race was scheduled to be 58 laps but was docked by one after the first start was aborted due to Daniil Kvyat’s Red Bull breaking down on the warmup lap). This was a problem for Hamilton as his pit stop had dropped him back to sixth place.

    (SD-Agencies)