Although visibly annoyed, even Sebastian Vettel late on Saturday could see the bright side under gloomy skies in Melbourne.
The reigning world champion is unlucky 13th on the Melbourne grid, while his teammate Daniel Ricciardo delighted the partisan crowd by driving through Red Bull’s crisis and splitting the dominant Mercedes cars with P2.
"This shows what our car can do," Vettel told German television RTL.
Red Bull’s Dr Helmut Marko agreed: "Our car is good, as we have seen (with Ricciardo).
"Again we have had a software problem with Sebastian, so the poor performance, it was purely a software problem," he insisted.