In the round-up: Nico Hulkenberg said he had to work hard on saving fuel at the end of the Australian Grand Prix despite the Safety Car period earlier in the race.

Hulkenberg said he was satisfied with his seventh place finish after a difficult start in Australia:

I think the race pace was decent today, really decent. Most of the time we couldn’t really show so much because I was in traffic a lot behind other cars so I think we could’ve gone quicker in some places. I’m very happy with the weekend.

Obviously Friday was a really difficult day for me. I wasn’t happy at all but we managed to turn a difficult start into a really good weekend and very satisfying Sunday. P7, six points I think is really rewarding.

We had to save a lot of fuel today. And especially at the end it was getting worse and worse and I didn’t want to lose the DRS train from Max [Verstappen] and Fernando [Alonso] in front. So I was juggling the balls but very happy to score that seventh place.

The Haas, obviously, both fell out of the race which helped us. But then the Safety Car didn’t help us it brought Fernando in front of us [when] I think under normal racing conditions he would definitely finish behind me. So you know that’s racing – lucky on one side, unlucky on the other side. But all in all I’m very happy about the weekend.