Wehrlein confident he will be back for China

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Sauber's Pascal Wehrlein says he is sure that he will be ready to race in the Chinese Grand Prix in two weeks time.

The 22-year-old German driver was forced to pull out of this weekend's season opener in Melbourne at late notice. His place in the Australian Grand Prix will be taken by Ferrari reserve driver Antonio Giovinazzi.

Wehrlein insisted that the decision to pull out of Sunday's race wasn't because of a recurrence of the back injury he sustained in January while competing in the Race of Champions.

He missed the first four days of pre-season testing while awaiting medical clearance to drive. He was able to participated in the second week, and reported no problems with his back.

Wehrlein admitted on Saturday that the injury had meant he'd missed out on too much fitness training over the off-season. New rules mean will have to be in even better shape in 2017 than ever before.

"I had a back injury and I couldn't train as hard as I wanted and that is it," Wehrlein explained. "The injury happened nine weeks ago, and that was the time where you just have to prepare as good as you can for the season.

"The injury took me a step backwards, of course, and now I'm just catching up," he continued. "I just realised in the long runs that my fitness is currently not enough for 60 laps.

"The decision was made between myself and the team. The doctors were not involved," he added.

"Anyone who knows how ambitious I am will know how much this decision hurts me. Especially since I'm having no pain."

Hamilton takes pole for the 2017 Australian Grand Prix

Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn rejected "ridiculous" claims that Wehrlein had been benched in favour of Giovinazzi for "political" reasons. Sauber gets its race engines from Ferrari, who are backing the Italian's racing career.

Despite his late-notice call up, Giovinazzi was less than two tenths off the pace of team mate Marcus Ericsson in qualifying. He will start his maiden Grand Prix from 16th place on the grid.

However the team doesn't expect to recall Giovinazzi for a second consecutive race. Wehrlein said that he was confident that he would be ready to race in the next race in two weeks time.

"I've been in the car for four days now and I've been feeling better every day. Next week I will continue to improve," he said.

"I'm going to train hard in Europe next week, and I'll be back in the car in China on Friday. Then we'll see."

GALLERY: all the pics from Saturday's action

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.