Midland encouraged by double finish

"It was satisfying to have our first double-finish of the year after the problems we had in Bahrain," said Burgess.

Dutchman Christijan Albers, who had retired with mechanical problems in Bahrain last weekend, finished in 12th position, ahead of teammate Tiago Monteiro.

Both drivers were two laps down, but Burgess claimed they could have finished higher if not for having been stuck behind slower cars at the start.

"We were forced to make manual starts with both cars, which compromised our eventual finish quite heavily," Burgess added. "As a result of that, we got stuck behind some slower cars off the lights, but after that, we had pretty good pace for the rest of the race.

"Both our guys drove brilliant races. The pitstops, the cars and everything else ran fine for the rest of the race. We just have to work on the reliability issues that we had with the driveshafts and get our starts back to normal. We know what we have to do and we should have some new parts for Melbourne."