Piquet welcomes stroke of luck

The Brazilian, who had scored just two points before this race, finished in second position, having started from 17th place after a poor qualifying.

Piquet took full advantage of the safety car period and, using a one-stop strategy, emerged in the lead of the race with less than 10 laps to go.

He eventually had to settle for second behind Lewis Hamilton.

"I don't even know where to start," said Piquet. "The car was getting better and better in practice, and we were going well until qualifying, where I didn't have a very good run in the first session, and then when on the second run I got a bit of traffic, and that was it, so I started from the back.

"I thought that was how I'd finish my weekend, but then we became quite lucky with these safety car rules. The team did a good decision by pulling me in at the right time.

"Obviously before the race we had a bit of a gamble between one and two stops, and we had the option when we started the race, and I think it was perfect strategy because if we'd gone for an aggressive, short first stint and tried to overtake in the beginning, I wouldn't have arrived here (on the podium). So we got lucky, and in the end I just maintained my pace."

Piquet said it was better to not try too hard to keep Hamilton behind, as he reckons he could have lost his chances of a podium finish.

"After the safety car I knew I just had to keep my pace, and I knew I mustn't push my tyres too hard in the beginning as I had to keep them until the end," he said. "When I was leading the race I knew Lewis would come by quickly and I knew Felipe wasn't that much quicker than me.

"If I'd taken too many risks (trying to hold Hamilton off), Felipe might have overtaken me, so I decided I had to save second place rather than end up in third or fourth place and not be so happy. I just maintained the pace, made no mistakes and kept the rear tyres good until the end."

Piquet finished ahead of Ferrari's Felipe Massa, the first time two Brazilians were on the podium since 1991, when his father Nelson shared the rostrum with Ayrton Senna.