Running fourth when the first safety car was deployed, Fisichella looked set to score Force India's first F1 points in the season opener before a pit-stop blunder cooked his goose.

The Italian missed the stop mark and Force India crew had to manually push him back to the pit box and the precious time lost saw him rejoin the race in 14th position.

"I'm very disappointed with the mistake I made in the pit stop. I was confused with last year as we were always in last slot in pit lane, so I just overshot and had to be pulled back into the pits. I'm really sad about this as I think we could as I think we could have got a good result," a dejected Fisichella later said.