Renault rookie Heikki Kovalainen has admitted that his debut Grand Prix was a "disaster" and "a bit of a mess", which the Finn hopes to put behind him as quickly as possible.

It was a nightmare weekend, a catalogue of errors, mainly the result of overdriving the R27, which led to team boss Flavio Briatore describing the performance as "rubbish".

Kovalainen's Melbourne misery won't have been helped by the fact that another rookie, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, almost stole the show, having come close to finishing second, ahead of teammate and double World Champion Fernando Alonso.

"My first Grand Prix was a disaster," writes the Finn in a column for the BBC. "The whole race was a bit of a mess and I'm going to try to forget it as quickly as possible.

"Flavio Briatore did not mince his words afterwards, in private or public, but that's completely normal," he continued. "It was a shame it happened on my debut. It would have been better to kick off my season with a better performance, but everything went wrong from the start to the end.

"I understand their frustration," he admitted. "I am more disappointed than anyone, but I'm not going to let my head go down and be sad about it. I have learned enough as a test driver to do a lot better job than I did in Melbourne but unfortunately there were too many mistakes that cost me time. I don't think I learned a lot last weekend other than what can go wrong. There is not much to take from last weekend. I finished the race, but that was it."

Explaining his 'debut from hell', Heikki writes: "It all started from not qualifying very well. I just wasn't quick enough. I didn't do a clean enough lap to be able to qualify in the top 10. Then I was in traffic the whole race and made too many mistakes. When I qualified 13th, I knew it was going to be difficult to do a decent race, but it was a lot worse than I was expecting."

However, the Finnish hot shot remains confident that thing will improve, for him and the team: "Our car is not as quick as the front-running cars, but it's better than where I finished with it. We are about the same pace as the BMW Saubers. It looks like Ferrari are a little bit ahead, and then the McLaren, and then BMW and us.

"I think we can fight with the BMWs," he continues, "and on a good day maybe fight with McLaren. Third or fourth fastest - that's where we expected to be before the first race. We have a strong team and that's not going to break down after one race."