McLaren’s Lando Norris won the race, with Mercedes’ George Russell finishing on the podium, as Kimi Antonelli ended up fourth on debut.
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Earlier in the week, Hamilton turned heads at Albert Park when he arrived at the paddock in a black suit without a shirt.
But there were no bold statements on race day as he struggled to take a point and his team mate Charles Leclerc laboured to an eighth-place finish.
Frustrated by his car’s performance, Hamilton had several testy exchanges with Ferrari race engineer Riccardo Adami on the team radio.
He complained he was wrong-footed by a call on the weather during the race and let down by poor strategy.
Despite the challenges, he found himself in the lead briefly as rivals pitted en masse late in the race.
But after his own late pit-stop, he ended up finishing behind an unlikely procession of drivers, including Williams’s Alex Albon (fifth), Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll (sixth) and Nico Hulkenberg (seventh) of Sauber.
Hamilton said he was grateful just to finish a race which saw six out of the 20 cars fail to.
“Overall, not what I was hoping for, but there was so much to get accustomed to, with all the switch settings and changes that (the team) were throwing at you,” he said.
“Then just the balance of the car… It was really very, very tricky.
“I think we can improve that in the next race, hopefully, and get the car in a sweeter spot. I think there’s a lot more potential in the car than what we were able to extract today.”
Sunday was Ferrari’s second major reality check, having had the first on Saturday when Leclerc and Hamilton qualified seventh and eighth respectively, well off the pace of the McLarens.
They have work to do but only a week to do it before the Chinese Grand Prix.
“It’s only the first race of the season,” said Leclerc.
“It’s not the first race we would have hoped for but looking forward we need to re-motivate ourselves for Shanghai and recover from what was a disappointing first weekend.”
