Sebastian Vettel has revealed F1's new radio rules meant he was not allowed to know what had caused teammate Kimi Raikkonen's fiery retirement during the Australian Grand Prix.

Vettel started his season with a strong drive to third, which could have been even better were it not for a red flag and Ferrari's questionable strategy call at the restart. In the opening stint Vettel was leading a Ferrari one-two but Raikkonen was later forced to retire with fire coming from the airbox of his car.

In the build up to the Australian Grand Prix there had been a clampdown on the messages allowed between driver and pit wall. Though this was relaxed slightly in the hour before the race to allow for discussions around strategy, Vettel was not allowed to know the details of the No. 7 car's retirement.

In the post-race press conference for the top three, Vettel was asked about the other car retiring and said: "Until now, I don't know what is the problem. In the past we had a radio so it was nice to hear what was the problem but I was only informed that he had to retire. I don't know why. Maybe you can tell me why?"

When he was told, he replied: "Thank you very much. I was not allowed to get that message."

The retirement mirrored last year's Australian Grand Prix, where Raikkonen had a reliability issue late in the race and Vettel finished third. Vettel thinks he and Raikkonen were fairly evenly matched all weekend.

"As a team obviously we try to score as many points as possible. I think you could see in the first stint that there wasn't much between Kimi and myself. I think we were very close this weekend and ideally we would have fought for the same place on the track. I have no problems with Kimi, I get along well with him and equally, in general the first guy that I want to do well other than myself obviously is Kimi, so it's a shame that he didn't see the chequered flag."