D’Ambrosio confident he can build on lessons from his debut

The Belgian rookie finished 14th – albeit four laps down on race winner Sebastian Vettel – to end a trying opening weekend for the Yorkshire team with a position that matches their highest finish throughout the entirety of their debut 2010 campaign. That is subject to change though, should Sauber be found not guilty of technical infringements and Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi reinstated into the top 10.

With limited resources and budget, Virgin have concentrated on ensuring reliability in their cars in the first three fly-away races before installing a major performance upgrade ahead of the fourth round in Turkey in May.

However, that looked like backfiring in Melbourne, as Virgin flirted with joining Hispania Racing in suffering the indignity of not even qualifying for the season-opening grand prix after being outside 107 per cent of the fastest car’s time in Friday practice.

But the team found an extra few kilometres per hour overnight in the pits and got both D’Ambrosio and German Timo Glock on the grid.

Glock was forced out of contention with a loose rear wheel, but D’Ambrosio ploughed on to finish just behind Lotus’s Jarno Trulli.

“I’m really happy to have finished my first Formula 1 grand prix,” said the 25-year-old.

“The most important thing is that we completed the race and this will give me plenty of experience. I would like to thank the team for a great job all weekend. We had a very productive time and we will carry the lessons through to Malaysia and hopefully start moving forward from there.”

Glock spent five laps in the pits correcting the loose wheel but did return to the track to limp home, although his finish was not classified.

John Booth, team principal for the Dinnington operation, explaining the reason behind sending Glock back out onto the track, said: “To move forward we have to maximise our track time and gather as much data as possible to feed back into the development programme and I am comfortable that we have been able to demonstrate such promising reliability.

“And Jerome can feel very proud of what he has achieved this weekend.”