Dissapointing qualifying positions for Buemi and Alguersuari
Qualifying went as expected for the Toro Rosso drivers, who ended in 17th and 18th places. The Swiss and Spaniard placed in the area of the grid all weekend long, so they weren't too surprised. Their target now is to improve upon their positions and get somewhere near the top ten.
Sebastien Buemi (STR5-02):
FP3: Best lap 1.32.235, pos. 16th, 18 laps
Qualifying: Best lap 1.32.012, pos. 17th
“Q 1 went well, but I am a little bit disappointed about Q2, because I was hoping to do better, maybe thirteenth or fourteenth. On my final run, I chose to use the Prime tyre, which is not the best way to go quickly, as you should be able to make the most of the Option, but today the car did not allow me to be significantly faster on the softer tyre, so we decided to try the Prime, after it worked well on my first run in Q1. Now we will have to see if we can do something on the strategy front to try and get something out of tomorrow’s race. You could feel that the wind had increased a lot from this morning, especially in the first corner, but that was the same for everyone. I think we have lost out a bit in terms of performance compared to the other cars around us, but the team is working hard to catch up.”
Jaime Alguersuari (STR5-03):
FP3: Best lap 1.32.331, pos. 17th, 20 laps
Qualifying: Best lap 1.32.430, pos. 18th
“I had a lot of trouble with heavy traffic this afternoon and effectively, I only got one clean lap. It is a shame, as I am sure that without the traffic I could have got through comfortably to Q2 as the pace was easily there in the car, but I did not have enough fuel to do another lap and there would not have been time to go out again after I came into the pits. The last three qualifying sessions have not gone very well for me, but let’s see if we can come up with a good strategy for tomorrow and have a better afternoon. I am staying calm about it, because these situations happen now and again and I have to keep looking forward.”
Giorgio Ascanelli:
“There’s not much to say about this qualifying: we were simply not fast enough and it is down to the car as the drivers did what they could. I expected us to be outpaced here and we are pretty much running at our maximum capacity. However, we hope to have something good coming in the next race or two, which will allow us to move forward. We had two good races in Canada and Valencia, even if we were already losing ground to our nearest rivals, but at those tracks, our drivers were able to make a difference, but that was not possible here.”
