Nico Rosberg capitalised on a slow start off pole by teammate Lewis Hamilton and superior tyre strategy over Ferrari to win the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Sunday.

The German won his fourth straight GP after stringing together the final three races of 2015 to beat his Mercedes rival Hamilton by eight seconds.

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was third.

It was an incident-packed race with McLaren’s double world champion Fernando Alonso walking away from a horrifying high-speed crash and Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari catching fire in the pit lane.

Australian Daniel Ricciardo was fourth in his Red Bull, with Brazilian Felipe Massa fifth in a Williams and Romain Grosjean sixth for the newcomers Haas.