Toto Wolff says Christian Horner should stop 'moaning'

Toto Wolff: Always a political season

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has said that Christian Horner should stop moaning after his Red Bull counterpart called for the FIA to equalise engine performance.

Speaking after Sunday’s Australian GP, in which Mercedes dominated and Red Bull struggled, Horner said the governing body was able to rein in the world champions’ advantage and should do so for the good of the sport.

Winner Lewis Hamilton and team-mate Nico Rosberg finished half a minute ahead of Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari in third.

Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo could only finish sixth using a Renault engine Horner described as “undriveable”. Team-mate Daniil Kvyat failed to start after his car’s gearbox broke.

“If you come into Formula 1 and you try to eat each other, or perform on the highest level, and equalisation is what you need after the first race, and you cry out after the first race, it’s not how we’ve done things in the past and not how we’ve moaned,” Wolff said.

“I think just get your f****** head down and work hard and try to sort it out.”

Christian Horner: Says engine power should be equalised

Horner criticised Renault after the race, saying they are in “a bit of a mess” and that the performance of their power unit is getting worse not better.

It’s not the first time Red Bull have aimed such barbs at the French manufacturer who, unlike Mercedes, have struggled to adapt to F1’s new hybrid engine formula introduced last year.

In doing so, Red Bull leave themselves open to accusations of sour grapes. They dominated before the rules changed, and more than once since then Horner has called for the engine rules to be changed again.

However, the motive this time could have something to do with rumours that Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz – said to be frustrated by the downturn in results and Sebastian Vettel’s departure for Ferrari – is considering selling up.

“It is always a political season. It was last year and it will be this year,” Wolff told reporters. “There is this wall in Jerusalem where you can stand in front and complain. Maybe I should go there.”

Closing the gap: Wolff thinks Ferrari can get closer

Meanwhile, after Ferrari confirmed the improvement they’ve made over the winter, Wolff reckons the Scuderia will eventually pose a serious challenge.

“I think it’s just a matter of time. Ferrari has it all, they have all the resources, they have the right people; they have the right drivers, [it’s a matter of time] when they can reduce the gap,” he added.

“Half a minute is not the world. It’s not like we’ve lapped the whole field.

“That was just the first race of 20 of the season. Let’s see what happens in Malaysia.”

Australian GP paper review: Hamilton terminates the opposition

Lewis Hamilton’s “termination” of the opposition was the theme of Monday’s sports pages after the Mercedes driver romped to victory in Australia.

The presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the post-race podium interviews gave Fleet Street the perfect pun as the reigning world champion dominated Saturday and Sunday at Albert Park.

‘Ruthless champion proves he is still the terminator’ declared Daniel Johnson in the Daily Telegraph.

‘Hamilton - the cyborg assassin, the undisputed governor of F1, the phenomenal athlete - obliterated the opposition with machine-like precision. Pole position, fastest lap, chequered flag. Job done,' he added.

‘Do not let the margin of victory over his team-mate Nico Rosberg – 1.3 seconds – fool you. This was taken at a canter. His supremacy over Rosberg, not to mention the rest of the field, has deepened, perhaps substantially. Hamilton is well on the way to making himself indestructible.’

Kevin Eason echoed those sentiments in The Times, but admitted that Hamilton’s dominance had perhaps made the season-opener somewhat of an anti-climax.

‘Hamilton was also “the Terminator”, providing the incentive for a legion of Formula 1 fans to reach for the remote to turn the television off before heading back to the warmth of a comfy bed,” he wrote.

‘It is not Hamilton’s fault; he was peerless as he drove to victory. He started where he left off in Abu Dhabi at the end of last season, when he took his second world title.’

In The Sun Ben Hunt wrote: ‘Lewis Hamilton looked like the Terminator as he ruthlessly annihilated the field in Melbourne.

‘The world champion was like a machine calculating his way past defenceless victims en route to winning the Australian GP.’

His pit-stop aside, Hamilton led from start to finish in Melbourne and The Guardian’s Paul Weaver already suspects the world champion dealt a knockout blow to Rosberg.

‘Lewis Hamilton’s stroll in Albert Park yesterday was an imperious dismissal of his team-mate Nico Rosberg’s Formula 1 aspirations,' Weaver concluded.

‘He is driving the strongest car out there and when he looks at his only serious rival, Rosberg, he knows that he is a whole class better. And so does Rosberg.’

Sebastian Vettel completed the podium with third place on his Ferrari debut, but The Independent’s David Tremayne isn’t convinced the Scuderia have actually improved.

‘Before everyone gets carried away on the red tide, it is worth pointing out that Vettel was 34.5 seconds behind Hamilton, and that last year Fernando Alonso finished 35 seconds behind Rosberg,’ he wrote. ‘Is that progress?’

Red Bull threaten to quit F1 unless regulations are changed

Red Bull have warned they could quit F1 unless the sport’s regulations are overhauled in the wake of Mercedes' crushing victory in the Australian GP.

The former world champions finished the season-opening event a lap down on runaway leaders Mercedes, who have dominated the sport since the advent of F1’s new power-centric turbo era.

According to Helmut Marko, an advisor to Dietrich Mateschitz, the Red Bull magnate who owns both the eponymous outfit and its junior team Toro Rosso, the group could withdraw from the sport at the end of the year.

"We will evaluate the situation again [in the summer] as every year and look into costs and revenues," Marko was quoted telling the Austrian media in Melbourne.

"If we are totally dissatisfied we could contemplate an F1 exit. The danger is there that Mr Mateschitz loses his passion for F1."

Ted Kravitz brings you all the latest news following the Australian Grand Prix.

The warning comes despite Red Bull having signed a deal with F1’s commercial right controller, Bernie Ecclestone, committing themselves until 2020.

Speaking on Monday, Ecclestone said he didn’t think Mateschitz would walk away simply because his team wasn’t dominating anymore.

"Whether they will, who knows?," he told Reuters. "Dieter is a sporting guy and I don't think he'll stop because he's being beaten. He's more likely to stop if he was winning."

Red Bull endured a torrid weekend in Australia, with the car of Daniil Kvyat breaking down on the formation lap and Daniel Ricciardo lapped by both Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

Team boss Christian Horner hit out at Red Bull’s engine suppliers Renaultafter the race, describing them as “a bit of a mess”, and calling on the FIA, F1’s governing body, to consider implementing “an equalisation mechanism” in order to clip Mercedes’ wings.

“The problem is the gap is so big. You end up with three-tier racing and I think that’s not healthy for Formula 1,” Horner said.

Ecclestone agrees. "They are absolutely 100 per cent right," he said. "There is a rule that I think [former president] Max [Mosley] put in when he was there that in the event...that a particular team or engine supplier did something magic - which Mercedes have done - the FIA can level up things.

"They [Mercedes] have done a first class job which everybody acknowledges. We need to change things a little bit now and try and level things up a little bit."

Marko also insisted that Red Bull would be unhappy with F1’s current formula even if they were still replicating their success at the turn of the decade when they won four successive title doubles.

"These power units are the wrong solution for F1, and we would say this even if Renault were in the lead," he reportedly said.

"A designer like Adrian Newey is castrated by this engine formula. These rules will kill the sport."

Australian GP driver ratings

Strange to hear Lewis Hamilton admit that he required the ‘reassurance’ of his victory in Melbourne given that a flicker of self-doubt hadn't been apparent in the world champion’s performance at any point over the weekend. Turning the tide in Practice Three after being narrowly out-paced by Nico Rosberg in Friday’s warm-up acts, Hamilton’s pole position effort was the lap of the weekend, a mesmerising charge which his team-mate called "awesome". It was also the decisive act behind his victory, providing the Englishman with the solid platform from which to deliver a masterclass of frontrunning driving to secure his seventh win in eight races and the perfect start to 2015.
Rating out of ten: 9

On paper, the Australian GP was a closely-fought affair with Nico Rosbergjust 1.3 seconds behind Hamilton when the chequered flag fell. In reality, as Rosberg subsequently acknowledged, Hamilton was in cruise control and never really under threat. "Lewis didn’t make any mistakes and it wasn’t possible to get any closer,” the German admitted. Despite hour after hour in Mercedes' race simulator over the winter, Rosberg still appears bereft of a method with which to beat his team-mate in a straight fight - making his subdued defeat in Melbourne all the more disappointing. But give Nico's sportsmanship the credit it deserves. "Lewis did a fantastic job," he graciously acknowledged on the podium. "He drove like a world champion all weekend." 
Rating out of ten: 7

A tad lucky at the start, when he bounced over the kerb and triggered carnage behind him, but all's well that ends well and Sebastian Vettel'sclinched-fist celebration as he returned to Parc Ferme after the race said it all. For Ferrari and their new recruit, third place was as good as a victory. The only dispute is about who would have been more relieved: Ferrari, after only their third podium since November 2013, or Vettel with the instant validation of his decision to abandon the family nest at Red Bull for Ferrari. A driver who was purportedly considering quitting F1 last year has his mojo back.
Rating out of ten: 8

A solid points for Felipe Massa haul from a solid performance. But no more than that.

Massa blamed “losing a second-and-a-half behind Daniel Ricciardo on my out-lap” for the loss of third position to Vettel but, as Williams chief Pat Symonds acknowledged afterwards, Ferrari had the faster package this weekend. Although he was disappointed to have finished fourth, Massa would surely have struggled to rebuff the advances of Kimi Raikkonen but for the Finn’s costly first-lap aggravation and the impression throughout was that Williams were missing the muscular aggression of Valtteri Bottas.
Rating out of ten: 6

The star of the race, Felipe Nasr’s performance was the unexpected delight of a largely unmemorable grand prix as he collected fifth place for a team which didn't score a point in the whole of 2014.

Unfazed either by his debut or the off-track politicking which debased Sauber’s reputation at the start of the weekend, Nasr didn't put a wheel off line as he beat Daniel Ricciardo to fifth. Sauber’s description of his performance as “an outstanding achievement” was entirely justified. It’s worth noting, too, that in qualifying he was nearly a second faster than Sauber team-mate Marcus Ericsson. Quite what Jolyon Palmer, who beat Nasr to the GP2 title last year, made of his former foe’s performance is anyone’s guess.
Rating out of ten: 9

How the mighty have fallen. Daniel Ricciardo’s plucky efforts in qualifying and the race cannot disguise that this was an anguished weekend for the Red Bull team. Incredibly, Renault seem even further behind their power-supplier rivals than they were a year ago, rendering Ricciardo’s best efforts in front of his home crowd largely peripheral. A shame, because there’s a great driver waiting to burst into the limelight. 
Rating out of ten: 8

Fortune tends to favour the brave and sometimes it even doffs a cap in the direction of a trier, too. Eighty seconds off the pace even before the first round of pit-stops, Nico Hulkenberg and Force India's seventh place was ultimately the consequence of the bad luck which occured elsewhere. But nobody could begrudge the model professional of the grid that rarest of bonuses in his career: slightly more than he deserved.
Rating out of ten: 7

Credit Sauber for their smart strategy calls during Sunday’s race, including a first-lap pit-stop under the Safety Car for a new set of soft tyres, that helped propel Marcus Ericsson into the points and credit the young Swede for his late move on Carlos Sainz to grab eighth. But Ericsson paled in comparison with the debutant Nasr and the jury remains out on whether he has the requisite pace for F1.
Rating out of ten: 7

A points-scoring debut in F1 is no trifling achievement and Carlos Sainz’sninth place will have silenced the sceptics - for now at least. Over the course of the weekend, however, there were plenty of scruffy moments from the young Spaniard.
Rating out of ten: 6

Sergio Perez in action

Sergio Perez would be well advised to consider a flutter on the lottery this week. Despite making a hash of overtaking the mobile chicane that goes by the name of a McLaren-Honda, and despite being half a minute down on team-mate Hulkenberg, the Mexican somehow found himself in the points at the end of the race.
Rating out of ten: 6

And the rest...

How low have McLaren fallen? So low that Jenson Button felt moved to describe Sunday's race as an enjoyable experience after finishing eleventh of the eleven runners who made it to the finishing line. In the context of the team's winter, in which they had previously failed to complete anything longer than a 12-lap stint, reaching the chequered flag was a giant step forward. But the fact that Button was twice lapped by the Mercedes car which out-paced the MP4-30 by five seconds in qualifying underlines just how far behind McLaren currently are.
Rating out of ten: 7

Not a day to remember for Kimi Raikkonen. On the back foot after he was given a shove into the second corner, the Finn was on the road to recovery before a malfunctioning pit-stop forced him to retire. “It’s simply that, today, everything happened to me,” bemoaned Kimi. True, but Raikkonen was also the architect of his own downfall with the mistake in qualifying which cost him third on the grid. But for that...
Rating out of ten: 6

So near and yet so far for Max Verstappen. Already the youngest driver ever to start a grand prix, the Dutch teenager was well on course to become the youngest points scorer in the sport’s history before his Toro Rosso developed a fever with twenty laps remaining. Still, even if the youngster won’t be leaving Australia with any tangible points, he can at least take the consolation of knowing that he proved a point in Melbourne.
Rating out of ten: 7

On a wretched day for the Lotus team, who must have fancied their chances of beating Red Bull and starting the season as the fourth-fastest outfit on the grid, neither Romain Grosjean nor Pastor Maldonado made it past the first lap. Grosjean can at least take solace in out-qualifying his team-mate, but for Maldonado there was just another accident to add to the list - albeit on this occasion in entirely blameless circumstances.
Rating out of ten: N/A

Poor Kevin Magnussen must have wondered why he bothered making the trip to Melbourne. After a crash in practice restricted him to just eleven laps on Friday, he failed to make it past Q1 on Saturday and then had to park up his car on the formation lap of Sunday’s race. Still, the air miles might come in handy one day. 
Rating out of ten: N/A

His participation wasn't as limited as Magnussen's, but Daniil Kvyat is still technically awaiting his Red Bull debut after failing to start the Australian GP due to a broken gearbox. Judging by their comparative results in practice and qualifying, however, the Russian may be in for a tough time against Ricciardo - the Aussie was over half a second quicker in Saturday's head-to-head.
Rating out of ten: N/A

One of three drivers who didn't make it to the starting grid on race day,Valtteri Bottas did not feature due to a back injury. Williams missed him. And so did the spectacle.
Rating out of ten: N/A

Pat Symonds admits Williams have slipped behind a resurgent Ferrari

Pat Symonds: Says Williams are behind Ferrari

Pat Symonds admits Williams have slipped behind a resurgent Ferrari in the 2015 pecking order after losing out to Sebastian Vettel in the fight for third place in Australia.

The Grove team were forced to start the race with only one car afterdoctors ruled Valtteri Bottas unfit to drive, but Massa was unable to convert his starting position of third into 'best of the rest' behind Mercedes.

Having run in the final podium position during the opening exchanges, Massa made his one and only pitstop early, which in theory should have helped him defend the spot by having fresher rubber.

Yet such was their pace deficit to the Scuderia, Vettel was able to leap ahead in the stops, comfortably rejoining ahead of the FW37.

“We have a bit of work to do, Ferrari are quicker than us,” Symonds told Sky Sports F1.

“It was quite a difficult race tactically, we felt the way Vettel was right behind us he must be pretty quick, we had to avoid the undercut so we went early and we saw in those couple of laps that he was pretty quick. It reminds me of Imola in 2005 actually [Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari and Fernando Alonso in Symonds’ Renault]. There was very little we could do about it.”

From the temporary street circuit around Albert Park, F1 heads to a very different challenge in Sepang in two weeks' time – a track which should suit Williams better.

“Australia is quite a unique circuit and we often see some odd results here,” the chief technical officer added.

“I think we have seen that you have the two Mercedes and then ourselves and Ferrari and then the rest – I don’t think that will change, but the small gaps might be quite different circuit to circuit.”

Susie Wolff is unlikely to deputise if Valtteri Bottas cannot drive in Malaysia

Bottas is expected to be passed fit to return to the cockpit in Malaysia, but should the Finn be forced to once again stay on the sidelines, it appears unlikely that Susie Wollf would deputise.

“She is not actually our reserve driver, she is our test driver,” Symonds explained. “With Valtteri we are getting good indications from the medical people. I don’t think I have ever seen a race driver as disappointed when I spoke to him this morning.”

Williams also have GP3 Champion Alex Lynn on their books, but Symonds was giving little away on who might drive.

“We are looking at some plans,” he said when pressed.

Meanwhile, former Williams world champion Damon Hill said they might get more help from Mercedes if Ferrari continue to make gains.

“They may get some more help from Mercedes because Mercedes will clearly want cars with their engine between them and the competition,” he told Sky Sports F1.

“They’ve got the issue that they’re not going to take advantage of any progress that Is made by an alternative engine. They’re stuck with the Mercedes engine.”