Sebastian Vettel conceded Ferrari didn't have the pace to challenge Lewis Hamilton despite taking victory at the Australian GP on Sunday.

After a dominant performance in qualifying, many were expecting the race to be quite literally a walk in the [Albert] park in Melbourne.

That was looking the case too when Hamilton led away at the start and built just enough of a margin to keep the Prancing Horses at bay.

On a longer pit strategy though, Vettel benefitted from a mid-race Virtual Safety Car which allowed him to change tyres while his rivals were lapping much slower than usual and emerge ahead of the Mercedes.

The German would then hold off the Briton for the second half of the race but later conceded his second straight win in Australia wasn't won by performance.

"If you look at the gaps the whole weekend, we are not yet a true match [for Mercedes]," he claimed.

"Therefore at this point, we know that we are not yet where we want to be because we want to be fastest."

The four-time world champion also played down any similarity between his win on Sunday and that 12 months ago when a longer pit strategy also saw him overhaul Hamilton.

"Last year we had more pace relative [to Mercedes], last year we were putting them under pressure," Vettel said.

"Today I think we didn't have the true race pace to match them.

"We still had enough pace to stay ahead and make it very difficult for him to be close and try to do something, and compared to the others it didn't look like there was no whole train behind us too, so I think we had some decent pace."

What was also surprising about Vettel's performance is how teammate Kimi Raikkonen had a reasonable advantage over him for much of the weekend.

Indeed, he was falling back from the Finn before the unexpected change in fortune but does know why.

"I think the car has huge potential, but yeah, I'm still struggling a little bit," Sebastian admitted.

"I want the car to be spot on when I hit the brakes and turn in, and in that window, I'm not yet happy.

"It's always sort of a compromise because it's our job to drive around the problems that we have, but when you have the confidence and you trust the car, you don't think for a second, you just go out and do it."