Rosberg: Good job

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Nico Rosberg has said a quick getaway laid the foundation for his maiden Formula One podium finish in the Australian Grand Prix.

Qualifying seventh on the grid, the Williams driver rose to fourth place on the opening lap before eventually finishing third behind McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and BMW Sauber's Nick Heidfeld.

The Melbourne race was the first since a ban on driver aids such as traction control and launch control was introduced - increasing the emphasis on a driver's ability to avoid wheelspin at the lights.

And, judging by both his start and his subsequent race at Albert Park, Rosberg appears to be one of those having little problem adjusting.

Good job

"It was just a great start," the 22-year-old German said.

"The start is nowadays down to the driver and also down to the engineers, how they set up the clutch and all the rest of it so I think all of us did a good job there.

"It was very tight going through Nick (Heidfeld) and Jarno (Trulli). I decided to go for that gap and I wasn't sure but I had no choice. I had to go for it and it was very tight but it worked out fine.

"And then coming out of the first corner I think I was fourth, I'm not sure, so from there I thought 'Jeez, this could be a really good race'."

Running fourth ahead of Heidfeld in the early stages, Rosberg suffered a setback when his compatriot took the position after both drivers made their opening pit stops.

But, with early frontrunners Robert Kubica and Heikki Kovalainen respectively retiring and dropping back in an at times chaotic race, Rosberg's consistency earned its reward.

"Obviously I had Nick behind me, so I thought he was really going to put the pressure on but I was pretty comfortable in the end with him. I could set a pretty good race compared to him through the whole race," he continued.

"Okay, he got past me in the pit stop, but still, third is fantastic. But the whole race was such a mess, with all the safety cars and everything, you really didn't know if it was really going to work out until the very end."

Cautious

Nevertheless, Rosberg remained cautious when asked whether the Williams team can now challenge the frontrunners on a consistent basis.

"In general, I prefer to be less optimistic before a season starts," he added.

"I try to be a bit more on realistic because it wasn't very clear where we were relative to Renault and Red Bull.

"Toyota also came up strong on the last day of the tests so you could easily find yourself 12th behind all these teams.

"We had a disastrous day on Friday, really it was probably the worst start we could imagine, so we started from zero on Saturday morning.

"We more or less put the car we came with into qualifying and so, as a basis, it shows that the car is good."