Sauber driver Felipe Nasr put in an impressive drive on debut at the Australian Grand Prix, raking in some precious points for team and driver with his fifth place finish.
Nasr joined Sauber from Williams over the winter and managed to hold off Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo in Melbourne to finish in the top five and collect 10 points for a team which failed to score in 2014. Nasr was overwhelmed by the result, having to hold back tears when informed after the race that he had achieved the best result for a Brazilian driver on debut.
“I did not think it could go so well," Nasr said. "I am so, so happy. It’s difficult to show. It was a very exciting day for me, for my family, for the fans, I could not have asked for more than that, everything was perfect, from beginning to end.”
Although Nasr suffered a rather chaotic start, he just put his head down to produce a consistent run and praised the team for the way it performed.
“In the race, the start and the first turn is the most critical. I was touched by a Lotus and found I had suffered some damage in the car, broken a wing, something on the tyre or wheel, but after three or four corners I was not feeling anything wrong and my engineer told me to continue that everything was normal and so I did.
“At the restart I managed to pass a car and then to run clean from then on, not missing anything, perfect pit stop, everything worked today."
The young driver's performance was also an extra bonus for Sauber so early on in the season, and Nasr admits he doesn't expect such competitiveness to last.
“It was above expectations, and realistically Sauber doesn’t have the most competitive car on the track, so these first races are the ones where there’s a bit of confusion and I can try to take advantage to score some points and that's what I did. Later on many teams will improve and everything will be more complicated, let us take our chances as much as possible to score at the beginning.”
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