Liuzzi says points finish is magic

"I'm really pleased. We achieved our target and scored some points, which is a great result for myself and for the team," said Liuzzi, who scored his first points in Formula 1 since the 2007 season.

"It was a difficult race as with this amount of fuel and the tyres, plus the heat, we had a bit to control but overall I think we can be pretty happy about how we handled it and to be in the points is magic.

"All the top teams finished ahead of us and there were no failures or reliability issues so it was the maximum we could have achieved.

"I'm now looking forward to Australia where we will get some more updates and it could put us in an even better position for the next race. Overall a great result for the team," added the Italian, who had started from 12th position.

Team-mate Adrian Sutil endured a disappointing day after failing to turn a solid qualifying into a good result.

The German spun on the first lap of the race and then charged back through the field to take 12th place.

"At least we finished," he said. "After the incident in the first corner it was the maximum we could do. We had a good race in the end, learning a lot about the tyres and how the car behaves at the end of a race, but the incident pretty much destroyed my hopes of getting any points.

"I don't really know what happened in that corner - I was driving and then there was a big cloud of smoke so I was blind going into it. I touched someone and spun and that was it. It's a shame but we will keep pushing for the next race."