A chastened Ferrari team will look for a quick reaction in the next Formula One race in Malaysia after Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull powered to victory in the Australian Grand Prix this morning.

The Italian giants played a supporting role as Vettel secured a 22-second victory to give Red Bull the early advantage in the new season.

Ferrari had to satisfy themselves with Fernando Alonso's fourth placing and Felipe Massa's revised seventh place after two Sauber exclusions for technical infringements.

"There is no point in denying that we leave Australia with a sense of disappointment," team principal Stefano Domenicali said.

"Again today, our performance level was not a match for that of the best, especially one of the Red Bulls.

"Nevertheless, we managed to pick up some valuable points, especially with Fernando, who drove a great race, recovering from what happened to him on the first lap."

Domenicali said Ferrari will study the outcomes of the Australian race in a bid to bounce back for the April 10 Malaysian GP.

"We will have to react immediately, starting with the next race in Malaysia," he said.

"One of the main themes is the level of downforce at the front: we must find out why we did not get on track what was predicted by the data.

"One of the few bright points was reliability, especially on the engine side and with the KERS (kinetic energy recovery system)."

Alonso, who gained personal satisfaction from finishing in front of Vettel's Australian teammate Mark Webber, had to again be content with fourth.

"If you just look at the classification, this is not such a bad result; yes we have lost ground to Vettel and Hamilton, although we have done better than Webber and Button." Alonso said.

"Here at Albert Park, it seems that I have a season ticket for fourth place, as it’s the third time in four years that I’ve finished the race in this position."