Arvid Lindblad started his post-race interview with Sky Sports by saying he had been rendered “speechless” by his superb result on debut at the Australian Grand Prix. He made it immediately clear he was not speaking literally as, brimming with confidence after becoming the 70th F1 rookie to score points in their first race, he issued a strong battle cry for the season ahead.

Britain’s latest motorsport talent, at just 18 years old, insists he is not just here to make up the numbers. “I think I showed people a bit of what I’m here to do,” Lindblad smirked. Yes he did, qualifying ninth on Saturday and finishing a place higher, via a first-lap surge which saw him rise, briefly, as high as third place.

That first-lap foray into the battle at the front came via an outstanding launch off the line while many others bogged down, clearly still not accustomed to the new way of doing things in F1. As a newcomer, Lindblad doesn’t have any old habits to forget and that might have helped him as he found himself wheel-to-wheel with Lewis Hamilton.

“I fell in love with the sport watching Lewis on the TV,” said Lindblad, who was still a foetus when Hamilton made his F1 debut in early 2007. “He was a big reason why I wanted to be here today. It was pretty nuts to race with him. There were a lot of pinch-me moments today.”

Not that he was overawed by the situation he found himself in. His Racing Bulls car didn’t have the pace to keep up with the front-runners, but he was able to make it five Brits in the top eight by the time he took a chequered flag, having tried but failed to get the better of fellow youngster Oliver Bearman in the Haas.

While he was further forward, though, he had made his vastly more experienced rivals work for it. Lindblad said: “I have a lot of respect for the senior guys in the sport, but I’m also not going to roll over and give them the place. I’m here to fight. When I’m in the car, I’m a ruthless competitor and I’m going to take every inch I can get and I think I showed that on lap one.”

It is a sample of one and the four points scored in Melbourne on Sunday will mean little if Lindblad fails to build on it. Perhaps aware of that, and of how bluntly he had been talking, he rounded off the interview with a caveat: “I’ve done one weekend and I don’t want to talk too much.”

But it was clear that he was loving living in the moment as the teenager added: “Coming into this weekend, people said there was going to be a lot of pressure and this and that, but I’m here for myself. I worked my whole life to get here to Formula 1. I don’t have to do it for anyone. When I was five years old I had a dream, and my dream was Formula 1. I was living my dream today and I just wanted to do it as well as I possibly could. I’ve had a lot of fun this weekend.”