Renault thrilled with Petrov's result

The result rescued Renault's weekend after team leader Robert Kubica was released into the path of Adrian Sutil's Force India in the pitstops and ultimately had to retire as a consequence. The team was also fined over the incident.

But Renault's chief race engineer Alan Permane said the squad could still take a lot of pleasure from the grand prix thanks to Petrov's drive.

"It was an excellent drive from Vitaly today with good pace and consistency," said Permane. "He made a great start and did well to get ahead of [Nico] Rosberg, which was our target, and after that he was able to pull away from him comfortably.

"From then on he drove a faultless race and he can be very satisfied with his performance across the entire weekend."

Team boss Eric Boullier added: "We scored a lot of valuable points today, but just as important is the fact that Vitaly has had a superb weekend. He finished the race in fifth, which is obviously an excellent result.

"It's even more satisfying because Mercedes didn't score any points today, so we have made up ten points on them."

Petrov was equally thrilled with his achievement.

"I feel wonderful because we did everything almost perfect today," he said. "I made a good start and managed to pass Rosberg and [Lewis] Hamilton into the first corner, which was our target.

"After that, I didn't try and block Lewis too much because I had a problem with my tyre warm-up. I lost a lot of grip and I was fighting the car. I decided to let him through rather than risk losing more positions.

"The points today are very important for us because Mercedes didn't score any."