Lewis Hamilton takes swipe at Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber

Hamilton eased to victory ahead of team-mate Nico Rosberg in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, prompting Horner to ask the FIA to save the 2015 season by making the Mercedes slower.

On Monday, Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko branded the Melbourne race “boring” before warning the team could walk away from Formula One due to rules that “will kill the sport”.

But Hamilton dismissed the clamour for change, noting that Red Bull enjoyed unrivalled dominance between 2010 and 2013.

“I was sitting next to Sebastian [Vettel, now at Ferrari] after the race and I said: ‘Sebastian, you did this for four years. You were 30 seconds ahead. So I know how it must have felt back then.’

“He had nobody behind pushing him. At least I’ve got my team-mate, who I was really racing. I don’t remember that ever being the case with Red Bull.”

The reigning world champion’s comments are unlikely to be taken kindly by Mark Webber, who was Vettel’s team-mate during the German’s march to four successive individual titles.

The Australian was plagued by bad lack during his stint at Red Bull and only missed out on the 2010 drivers’ title in the final race at Abu Dhabi after an edgy four-way decider.

Hamilton continued: “If you want to put someone in the same car, there is no doubt where I would be finishing. People say it’s all the car. Well, it’s a big team that built this car. I’m the one who has to get in and extract the best from it.

“There has never been a driver that has won the championship that hasn’t had a great car that year. There’s nobody who had a Marussia and won the world championship, is there? Fangio still had a great car.”

However, F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone admitted he agreed with Red Bull over fears the season could be a procession for Mercedes.

“Red Bull are 100 per cent right,” said Ecclestone.

“There is a rule I think (former FIA president) Max Mosley put in that in the event of a particular team or engine supplier doing something magic, which Mercedes have done, the FIA can level up things. Mercedes have done a first-class job. We need to change things a little bit now.

“What we should have done was frozen the Mercedes engine and leave everybody else to do what they want so they could have caught up. We should support the FIA to make changes.”

The second race of the season takes place on March 29 in Malaysia.