Mercedes teenager Andrea Kimi Antonelli impressed Toto Wolff at his debut Formula 1 grand prix, retaining his fourth-place finish after a penalty was overturned to wind up one place behind teammate George Russell on the podium.
The 18-year-old, who started 16th on the grid for the Australian Grand Prix, was handed a five-second penalty for an unsafe release in the pit lane, but the decision by stewards was overturned following an appeal by Mercedes.
Antonelli -- who is Lewis Hamilton's replacement -- is one of six rookies this year, and only he and Oliver Bearman of Haas managed to make it to the end of the race without crashing out. Racing Bulls' Isack Hadjar delayed the race start with a heavy shunt into the wall on a wet track, destroying his rear wing during the formation lap.
Mercedes team principal Wolff was impressed by the teen's performance.
"He took it the right way, wheeled it in one by one, showed the pace when he had no traffic and eventually ended up P4 on the road, and that's impressive," Wolff said. "Even very good drivers spun or hit the wall, and it was easier to not finish than finish and he kept his cool. It was very impressive to see, and it shows he has a good future as long as the trajectory keeps being where it is."
On the penalty, Wolff said nobody saw it happen on the broadcast.
"You can only shake your head," he said. "It came up as an incident, nobody saw it, it wasn't played, and 90 seconds later there was a penalty of five seconds."
Antonelli said he was happy with his performance: "We got the worst possible conditions for a first race. I mean, we got wet, slicks on damp, slicks on wet, and then back to wet. So definitely a really, really eventful race. But really happy how it was managed from my side and from the team.
"I definitely cannot complain about today."
Russell produced a solid performance with a first podium of the season for Mercedes, after benefiting from Oscar Piastri skidding off the track.
"It was a race of survival really, and that midphase when it was going from inters and started raining more and went on to slicks, and then started raining -- that was probably the most decisive decision I've taken in terms of strategy," Russell told reporters.
"I came around the corner where Lando and Oscar went off and was like 'box, box, box, right now' and he came out of the pits and the intermediate tyres were probably six seconds slower in the first two sectors but then probably 10 seconds quicker in the last sector so I wasn't sure what was going to happen.
"To come home in P3 was an good result and an amazing job by Kimi as well to bring the car home in fourth, a great effort."
Wolff was complimentary to both his drivers.
"There's so much talk about Kimi and he merits it, but George is so good," Wolff said. "He extracts from the car more than the car has at times. He makes no mistakes. He's a true leader in the team, and we're lucky to have him."