Buemi completes programma, Alguersuari frustrated
At Scuderia Toro Rosso feelings were mixed. Sebastian Buemi had a good day, despite a brake issue which the team was able to fix quickly. Teammate Jaime Alguersuari meanwhile is hoping for the rain to help him find a good balance, as he is having difficulties on a dry track.
Sebastien Buemi, STR5-03:
First Practice Session - Best lap 1.14.734, pos. 18th, 29 laps
Second Practice Session - Best lap 1.14.304, pos. 17th, 33 laps
“The day went quite smoothly, apart from a problem with the brakes at the start of the afternoon session. When you brake at the end of the straight and the pedal goes long, it’s not a nice feeling so I came straight back to the pits. Well done to the team for fixing the problem so quickly. After that I was able to finish my programme, getting a good read on the tyres over the long run with both the Option and the Prime tyres. They say it will rain tomorrow, which means it will be a completely different story. We now need to look for ways in which we can improve for tomorrow.”
Jaime Alguersuari, STR5-01:
First Practice Session - Best lap 1.14.618, pos. 17th, 30 laps
Second Practice Session - Best lap 1.14.578, pos. 18th, 37 laps
“This was a difficult day in which I struggled with understeer and oversteer and currently we don’t look very competitive in the dry, so we must see what we can do to improve as I was not so happy with the balance of the car. But things could be better for us if the rain comes tomorrow as predicted. As for the incident with Schumacher, I had spun at the previous corner and so he came alongside me on the outside going into Turn 1. I tried to keep my inside line as he came round but all the same we touched.”
Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer:
“We completed our programmes with both cars, making up for lost time after we had a brake system issue on Sebastien’s car this afternoon. We tried a lot of different things across both cars, with Sebastien much happier with the balance than Jaime. Now we must look at the data from both cars and take the best elements from each of them to move forward tomorrow. However, we have to bear in mind that we are heading for a wet Qualifying and any decisions we reach regarding set-up has to take this into consideration, allowing for the fact it should be dry again on Sunday.”
