Raikkonen wins season opener

Finland's Kimi Raikkonen driving a Lotus made the most of a two-stop strategy to win the season-opening Australian Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne earlier.

The Finnish driver, who started the race in seventh place, held off Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and Redbull's Sebastian Vettel who finished second and third place, respectively.

"I believe my car is quite good, it's been feeling good all weekend and when we did the longer run it felt good," Raikkonen said in a AFP report.

"We knew that if the front tyres were lasting we would be fine. I was confident, but you have to get through the start and the first lap and it's the first race so you never know what's going to happen.

"I felt I had the car and it turned out to be pretty good."

Alonso and Vettel, who were on a three-stop strategy, were 12.4 seconds and 22.3 seconds behind the Finnish driver, respectively.

Alonso's teammate Felipe Massa and Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton finished fourth, fifth and sixth, while Mark Webber, in the Redbull, finished sixth on his home race.

18 cars finished the 58-lap race around the Albert Park street circuit with two retirements by Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo, while Nico Rosberg and Pastor Maldonado both encountered car trouble on the circuit.

The next race will be at Sepang in Malaysia next weekend.