But during 58 frenetic laps in Melbourne that saw only seven cars take the chequered flag, Rosberg kept his cool to come home 8.1 seconds behind the Brit and ensure Williams began the new campaign on an unexpected high note.

With the removal of traction control this season, many drivers believed the start would provide the best opportunity to gain valuable places.

The German had begun proceedings from seventh on the grid but jumped both Heidfeld and Jarno Trulli off the line before Felipe Massa spun out of fourth place at the first corner.

And Rosberg stressed an aggressive approach when the lights went out eventually provided the platform for his impressive result.

“It was just a great start,” he said

“The start is nowadays down to the driver and also down to the engineers, how they set up the clutch and all the rest of it so I think all of us did a good job there.

“It was very tight going through Nick (Heidfeld) and Jarno (Trulli). I decided to go for that gap and I wasn’t sure but I had no choice. I had to go for it and it was very tight but it worked out fine.

“And then coming out of the first corner I think I was fourth, I’m not sure, so from there I thought ’Jeez, this could be a really good race’.

“Obviously I had Nick behind me, so I thought he was really going to put the pressure on but I was pretty comfortable in the end with him. I could set a pretty good race compared to him through the whole race.

“Okay, he got past me in the pit stop, but still, third is fantastic. But the whole race was such a mess, with all the safety cars and everything, you really didn’t know if it was really going to work out until the very end.”

However, Rosberg sounded a more cautious note when asked whether the performance in Australia means Williams are now set for a return to the front of the grid on a more consistent basis.

“In general, I prefer to be less optimistic before a season starts,” the 22-year-old added.

“I try to be a bit more on realistic because it wasn’t very clear where we were relative to Renault and Red Bull.

“Toyota also came up strong on the last day of the tests so you could easily find yourself 12th behind all these teams.

“We had a disastrous day on Friday, really it was probably the worst start we could imagine, so we started from zero on Saturday morning. We more or less put the car we came with into qualifying and so, as a basis, it shows that the car is good.”