Australian GP: Nasr says Sauber/van der Garde row has been tough

Van der Garde won court cases in Switzerland and Australia, which upheld his claim that he has a contract to race for Sauber in 2015.

But on Saturday, van der Garde gave up his legal rights to race in Sunday's Australian Grand Prix after coming to an arrangement with the Swiss team, with talks to come to a resolution planned for next week.

That cleared the way for Nasr and Marcus Ericsson to race for the team in Melbourne, with Brazilian Nasr impressing as he narrowly missed out on Q3 with 11th on the grid for his debut F1 race weekend.

When asked by AUTOSPORT about his performance amid the legal dispute, Nasr said: "We could have extracted more performance but considering the situation, it was a big task for everyone to keep doing their job so I'm happy.

"For me, it was such a huge exercise mentally just to keep everything together to be able to qualify the car just because we didn't know what was going to happen.

"I tried to keep the same strength and just drive the car. It was not ideal coming into my first grand prix weekend having to go through all of this. It just doesn't make sense.

"But I have to be happy after all of that. Just one more tenth would have got us into Q3."

Team principal Monisha Kaltenborn added that Nasr's strong performance in qualifying was a relief.

"It was a very tense situation yesterday," she said. "But I am really very relieved and happy that both parties co-operated well to find a solution, which was most important."

Ericsson had a tougher qualifying session and will start 16th but said he was pleased to be back in the car considering the situation.

"It's nice to be driving and that's what we are here for," said the Swede.