Lewis Hamilton said his first race for Ferrari was “a big crash course” after he finished 10th in a chaotic Australian Grand Prix.

The seven-time champion led the race briefly but an incorrect strategy call as rain hit late in the race led to him dropping down the field.

Hamilton said: “It felt like I was in the deep, deep end.”

The 40-year-old added that he “didn’t have any confidence in the car and was nearly in the wall most of the time”.

McLaren’s Lando Norris won in Melbourne from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen with Hamilton’s former Mercedes team-mate George Russell in third.

It was a chaotic start to the season at Albert Park for a race that started wet, dried up and ended wet again, and featured three safety cars, an aborted start and a series of crashes.

Hamilton, who had qualified eighth, said: “I’m grateful I got through it, came out of it with a little bit of something, at least one point.

“Obviously I didn’t go off or spin. Lacking pace, for sure, but I do believe the car has more performance than we were able to extract this weekend.”

He said that the team left it too late to stop for treaded tyres when the rain came with 13 laps to go – he stopped three laps after Norris and one after Verstappen.

Hamilton said: “The last sector (of the lap), everyone was going off but I was managing to hold on, so I was just passing people, and once we got to the start line, it was dry.

“So I was like: ‘This is fine for me, I’ve just got to hold this out, I’ve only got a few laps to go.’

“But then it pelted down just in the last two laps or something, it was coming down, and that’s the moment we probably should have come in.

“In that moment, I was like, ‘oh my God, I’m third’. I was leading for a second. But I mean, yeah, I don’t know if we have anywhere near the pace as the McLarens had today. But I do think in the actual car, there is a lot more performance, I just don’t think we unlocked it this week.”

Team principal Frederic Vasseur admitted Ferrari had made the “wrong decision” and they would review the matter before next weekend’s second race of the season in China.

“It was the first time we have to communicate between the pit wall and car, we can do a better job, it was not a clean one at all.

“We will have to learn a lot for next weekend and improve the communication. And learn what Lewis is expecting from the communication. Let’s learn from today and be much better next week.”

Ferrari had a difficult weekend. Charles Leclerc, who made the same strategy decisions, started a place ahead of the Briton and finished two places in front after overtaking Hamilton at the final restart.

Vasseur said he believed Ferrari had not optimised their car for the track at Albert Park and that their real position in the field was right behind McLaren, as they had been up to the final part of qualifying.

“The conditions today are not representative of the performance,” Vasseur said. “Friday to Q2 is more representative.

“As soon as you overheat the tyres you have a big drop. The real picture of the performance is more what we saw on Friday and Saturday but even then McLaren is one step ahead.

“If you don’t adapt the car to the weekend to the tyres, to the track temp, you are out of the range of performance. Next weekend will be a different one.”