MELBOURNE — The two strongest drivers from the Formula One championship last year kept it up in the first race of the 2012 season, finishing in the top two spots.
But this time it was Jenson Button who led the charge from start to finish and won the Australian Grand Prix on Sunday, crossing the finish line 2.1 seconds ahead of Sebastian Vettel.
That small difference spoke volumes about the coming season, practically ensuring that it would not be a repeat of the past two, in which Vettel and his Red Bull team dominated and took the series title. Now, McLaren Mercedes — which finished second in the series in the past two years — and its two world champion drivers are ready to challenge. Coming in third place on Sunday was Lewis Hamilton, Button’s teammate at McLaren, who had started the race in pole position.
“Starting the year strong for this team is really important,” said Button, who finished last year second over all. “The last two years for us have been tricky, so coming away with Lewis’s pole and the victory today puts us in a great position, and starting on the right foot.”
It was Button’s third victory in Melbourne, where he won in a Brawn car in 2009 — a victory he said Sunday had been “too easy” — and then in his first race at McLaren in 2010. It was the 13th victory of his career.
Mark Webber, Vettel’s teammate, came in fourth, which was the Australian’s best finish at his home Grand Prix, where he had scored no higher than fifth, having made his first attempt in 2002.
“Today was a strong showing for us and it was a good day for Red Bull Racing, given what we went to bed with last night,” said Webber, referring to the team’s poor qualifying results.
Still, the race Sunday was far from a repeat of the previous season, even though all the main players finished so closely entwined.
The McLarens started from first and second on the grid for the first time since 2009, and Hamilton — who had a difficult season last year, with problems in his private life affecting his racing — drove an error-free race to a third-place finish.
The key? Button simply beat Hamilton into the first corner and never let go.
“A bit of a tough day,” Hamilton said, “but I will just have to keep my head up.”
A lucky intervention of the safety car after 34 laps allowed Vettel to slip in between the two McLarens, which had been first and second since the start.
“I think, over all, he was too quick today for the whole race,” Vettel said of Button. “So to come away second with a lot of points is very important. The car has a lot of potential.”
Button said the safety car had prompted his biggest worry in the 58-lap race.
“When you have a 10-second gap, it is a great place to be and you can control it,” he said. “But when the safety car comes out and it is 6 in the evening, it is hard to keep temperature in the tires.”
In a surprise, Romain Grosjean started the race third in the grid. The Frenchman, driving a Lotus, is making a return to Formula One after a brief stint in 2009. He had supremely out-qualified his world champion teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, who started only 17th.
But Grosjean had a bad start and immediately dropped down the pack before crashing out after only two laps, after his car and the Williams car of Pastor Maldonado hit when the Venezuelan tried to pass him.
The first race of the season had a record six world-champion drivers, and the top three finishers were all world champions. Fernando Alonso, another of the champions, finished fifth in his Ferrari after starting 12th, while Raikkonen, the 2007 world champion who returned to Formula One this season after a two-year break, finished seventh.
Schumacher, the seven-time world champion, started fourth in his Mercedes, looking as if he would put two difficult years behind him, after failing to make it to the podium since his return from retirement in 2010. But he dropped out of the race with a gearbox problem after only 10 laps.
The tension went right down to the last lap, as Jean-Éric Vergne, a rookie driver at the Toro Rosso team, was involved in a battle with his teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, for the final available points.
Heading into the final lap, Vergne was 11th, behind Raikkonen, and Ricciardo was 12th. Suddenly, Maldonado, who was in sixth position, crashed into a wall while Nico Rosberg, in eighth in the other Mercedes, suffered a flat tire after coming into contact with the Sauber of Sergio Perez.
Both Maldonado and Rosberg dropped out, offering more points to the Toro Rosso drivers. Ricciardo passed Vergne, while Paul Di Resta, the rookie of the year last year, passed Vergne down the straight and took the final point for Force India. Ricciardo finished ninth, taking two points in his first home race, and the last available point went to Di Resta.
“I don’t really know how that happened on the last lap,” Ricciardo said. “I was a bit lucky to be the last one in that group because I could have a clear picture of the other cars going off in front.”
Up and down the pack, in fact, the results of the race were more than usual about driver skill than simply the speed of the car.
