Kubica frustrated to miss out on podium

But the Renault driver, who finished in fifth position, conceded he was still happy to get good points again.

"It was an exciting race today and it's good to have scored some more points," said Kubica.

"At the start of the race I made a bad start and lost a lot of positions, but we made the right decision to stay out on slicks when it started to rain and I was able to move up through the field into third place.

"However, the critical moment of my race was when the safety car came out, which ended my hopes of a podium because I lost the big lead I had to the cars behind me.

"So although I'm happy to finish fifth, I still feel a bit frustrated to have missed a podium."

Team-mate Vitaly Petrov completed his best Formula 1 race so far after fighting his way to seventh position, giving Renault its first double point-scoring finish of the season.

"I'm happy to finish my first race in Formula 1 and to score my first points," said Petrov. "It was a difficult race and it wasn't easy to make the right decisions today. In the beginning, when it started to rain, some drivers came in for intermediates, but we decided to stay out on slicks, which was the right decision.

"Then I kept talking on the radio with the team to decide when we would change to intermediates, and again we got the timing right. When I changed to my second set of intermediates, I knew it would be important to look after the tyres, but we didn't know if it would continue raining or if the track would dry out.

"But I kept pushing, the engineers told me that I had good pace, and in the final laps I had some good overtaking moves, especially with Schumacher and Webber, to gain some more places."