“We didn’t see that coming for the first half of the race, it wasn’t looking too good but then things got a bit more entertaining towards the end,” Hulkenberg said. “We made some good calls, I think other people were struggling and we picked up the pieces but yeah, we were there when it mattered so very happy to have scored those points today.
“First race under your belt is like the first milestone, you learn so much in a race. We’ll digest and process everything. A couple of days to analyse, regroup and then we will go again.”
READ MORE: Hamilton rues ‘missed opportunity’ on Ferrari debut after ‘very, very tricky’ race in Australia
While it was a strong debut for the 37-year-old, his younger team mate became the third rookie to be defeated by the challenging conditions as he went off the track and found the barriers with just 12 laps of the race remaining.
The Brazilian had already impressed after he narrowly made it to the second part of Qualifying earlier in the weekend, knocking out both Hulkenberg and his fellow rookie Kimi Antonelli.
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