Mercedes promises immediate response to Ferrari defeat

Lewis Hamilton lost out to Sebastian Vettel at Melbourne, after higher tyre wear early in the race prompted him to pit first and gave his Ferrari rival the chance to leapfrog him at the stops.

With Hamilton saying Mercedes needs to especially focus on improving its tyre usage, Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff said his team would come back stronger because of lessons learned.

"It's personality-building," said Wolff about losing out to Ferrari in a straight fight at the Australian GP. "I think you just lose some and you win some.

"We have been very fortunate in the last three years that we won most of the race. And now it's about accepting that here Ferrari beat us.

"We will come back stronger. We didn't have great testing and we didn't have a great Sunday [in Australia], but we will leave no stone unturned in order to win more."

After three years of dominance, Wolff said that losing a straight fight with Ferrari did not feel especially bad – as the teams had always felt pressure from its rivals over recent years.

"Even if we won all those races and it did look like it was easy, it was clear it wasn't," he explained.

"We were always sceptical about whether it was good enough and we always tried to see the negatives in everything we did, and look at the worst-case scenario.

"We always considered Red Bull or Ferrari to be real competitors and they were. So therefore the perception or the perspective is absolutely the same."

He added: "I'd much rather win than lose but it's part of Formula 1. We had an exceptional run the last three years. You cannot expect to continue forever.

"It was clear the moment was going to come where we need to lose with humility, and accept that somebody else had done a better job, and that's what happened. They [Ferrari] had done a great job and Sebastian is a deserved race winner."