Sebastien Buemi scores on debut

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Almost lost amid the many story lines coming out of today’s Australian Grand Prix was Sebastien Buemi’s fine driver to eighth place. That became seventh after Jarno Trulli’s penalty.

Buemi, the only rookie in the field, began the weekend well by out-qualifying team mate Sebastien Bourdais.

He avoided the opening lap fracas, ran as high as fourth, and was never headed by Bourdais all race long. You can’t ask much more of a rookie on their debut than that.

He is the 69th driver to score a point on his debut, joining current drivers Sebastien Bourdais, Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Rosberg, Timo Glock and Mark Webber.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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11 comments on “Sebastien Buemi scores on debut”

  1. Has the merit of beeing there…it wasn’t a spectacular race, but did the possibles do end with a point(now 2)…Congrats

  2. Aaron Shearer
    29th March 2009, 14:21

    It’s quite nice to see a rookie finish in the points on their debut race. It’s a shame we didn’t get to see some onboard footage from him.

    It would be nice if you could choose to have onboard’s when you would like them, not when the BBC wants them

  3. StrFerrari4Ever
    29th March 2009, 14:55

    I agree with Aaron i wouldve loved to choose who to watch onboard lets hope they can take that onboard and give it to us fans well Toro Rosso pull through with still a far from complete car which has lacked testing time hopefully in Malaysia they make progress i’m expecting them by lets say Spain or Monaco they’ll be back to the sort of form they had with the STR3 if Red Bull manage to create a rear diffuser that suits their car i’m positive Newey will be as innovative as ever

  4. Buemi drove a fantastic race! I am starting to like that guy, he drives beautifully yet with a rubbish car, and also beats his teammate in his debut!!!

    Fantastic and well done!

  5. Has there been previous drivers called Sebastian (or Sebastien) before the current three? Looks like STR can do well by rotating their second seat among other Sebastians, that way they can score every race :P

  6. I think he drove quite a good race today. I wasn’t expecting him to do that well to be honest but, I feel he could have been a bit more aggresive defending his position and he may have finished even higher. But in the same breath, hats off to him for keeping his nose out of trouble. All in all a good drive, and beat bourdais, who is a waste of space. Toro Rosso should drop bourdais and imho, theres a big line of talented people queuing to get into f1!

  7. It was great to see a rookie unafraid of taking on the more experienced racers, and keep his head during the SC periods too. I hope we see much more of him this season – and it shows that Hammy is not unique, but is just the first of a hopefully long line of new talent in F1 – not forgetting Kubica, Vettel and Rosberg too….

  8. still best rookie debut in my mind was Mark Webber in a minardi crapbox.

    that was awesome, fending off Mika Salo!

  9. I was really quite impressed with Buemi – I quite liked him when I’ve watched him in GP2 but I thought he would struggle a little bit with F1 – he wasnt GP2 champion or anything like that, thought it might prove a bit of big step up without at least a seocnd place in the title to his name. I know it is only one race in, but he had the measure of Bourdais pretty much all weekend, he kept himself out of trouble, and although was slightly fortunate to find himself pop into the points at the end, he did race well.

    I think most of my being impressed was to do with low expectations, but even still – he’s just got to keep it up all year and he will have had a relatively successful debut season!

  10. i think brundles comment that he must have been learning the wrong circuit on his playstation game after his performance in practice was wide of the mark!

    Good performance by the lad he looked a little overawed when anyone got close to him but did a good job keeping Rosberg and Hamilton behind him for a good 10 laps!

    Solid debut and beating Bourdais in the process is a great result

  11. STR were heavily criticised when Buemi was announced as their driver. Nobody had a good word about him and were screaming that Bourdais deserved the drive ahead of him. But I am glad that he has proven the “experts” wrong and has outperformed Bourdais, just as Vettel did last year. Bourdais needs to pull his finger out, or e will be on the scrap heap before too long.

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