Despite causing an incident which effectively ended his race, Bruno Senna's Renault debut went down well with team boss Eric Boullier.

Following an off in Friday practice, Senna more than made up for it on Saturday when he qualified seventh, thereby out-qualifying his more experienced teammate Vitaly Petrov, something Nick Heidfeld has only managed three times this year.

However, it all fell apart when the Brazilian was a little too enthusiastic at the start of the race, carrying too much speed into La Source, running wide to hit Jaime Alguersuari and setting off a chain of events that caused problems for a number of drivers.

Having been hit was a drive through penalty, Senna kept his head down for the remainder of the afternoon, bringing his black and gold car home thirteenth, over ninety seconds behind the winner.

Despite a less than auspicious start however, team boss Boullier is happy, feeling his new signing has potential. "He needs to improve on this but it was a good race," the Frenchman told reporters after the race. "If he can deliver like he did this weekend in every race I think he will be good enough to bring points home."

Senna, who admitted to making a mistake at the start, and subsequently apologised to Alguersuari, who had qualified a highly impressive sixth but whose race was over before it had begun, is due to drive the Renault again at Monza.