On Saturday afternoon Lewis Hamilton thought his weekend was over when he suffered gearbox problems after the first qualifying session and he was forced to watch Q2 from pitlane. As if being fifteenth wasn’t bad enough, the team then had to change his gearbox and he was sent to the back of the grid.

With an obvious deficit to some of his rivals, Lewis thought there would be no way he would be able to fight back into a points scoring finish, let alone a podium, and that’s exactly what happened. Even though his trip up the grid was assisted by a few other incidents, Lewis learnt a very important lesson…

"I learnt to never, ever, ever, give up,” he said on his official website. “We showed in Brazil last year that we would always fight until the very end, and we showed it again in Melbourne yesterday. I'll never give up when I'm in the cockpit - I want to race as hard as I can and I'm looking forward to getting closer to the front and mixing it with the leaders again.”

After winter testing teams were still unsure just who stood where and now, after race one, it is obvious who has done their homework and who hasn’t and Lewis has given top praise to the new Brawn GP team for their efforts in securing the double here on Sunday.

“Melbourne gave us a clearer idea of which teams have done the best job over the winter. I've got to say again how much respect and admiration I've got for Ross Brawn and all the men and women at Brawn GP. They've done an awesome job over the winter, worked so hard in such difficult circumstances, that it must have been a dream come true for them to finish one-two with Jenson and Rubens,” he said.

“He must have had a very worrying winter, and he certainly had a few tough years before that, so he really deserves this success. It must have been a brilliant feeling for him to be able to stand on the podium yesterday, waving to his team. I saw a photo of the podium on the internet this morning - he looked really, really happy. They've shown just what an incredible sport we have and just how unpredictable F1 can be - I just wish I could have been on the podium to share his celebrations on Sunday."