Toro Rosso bag another few points at Turkey
Toro Rosso finished the Turkish GP with another 2 points in the bag thanks to a 9th place finish by Sebastian Buemi. His teammate however suffered a lot from tyre degradation and an additional fourth stop cost him a chance at some points.
Sebastien Buemi, STR6-02, Pos. 9th:
“In general I am very happy with my race and I don’t think I could have done better. However, it’s true that in the final two laps I lost two places and if not for this we could have brought home a seventh place finish. But I could not even hold the steering wheel anymore because there was so much vibration coming through from the tyres: it was not due to tyre wear, so we will have to analyse carefully what happened as I had not felt this before. All the same, it was a great race and I pulled off plenty of overtaking moves and I fought hard. Scoring points after starting sixteenth is reason to be pleased. We decided to do only three pit stops, although it was clear that here it did not cost that much time to make a pit stop so that was an interesting situation. We are continuing to develop the car and have more parts coming which I hope can keep us fighting for points in the next few races.”
Jaime Alguersuari, STR6-03, Pos. 16th:
“As usual, I did my best, pushing hard from the beginning. But I suffered a lot from degradation on the rear tyres, especially in the final stint. This meant I had a massive amount of oversteer, which is why I really had to come in for an additional fourth stop for fresh tyres towards the end. I don’t understand why my team-mate suffered much less than me in this respect, so we need to look at all the data to find out why. The next race is in Barcelona, which is obviously very important for me as it’s my home race. I have many good memories from there, including scoring points there last year.”
Franz Tost, Team Principal:
“Given our qualifying performance yesterday which put us in sixteenth and seventeenth places on the grid, we are happy to have finished in ninth place with Sebastien Buemi. He delivered his best performance of the season so far, as he was racing around eighth place for most of the race and occasionally even higher. Unfortunately, coming under pressure from the Lotus Renaults, who had much fresher tyres, he was unable to defend that position on the final lap. The team deserves praise for running a good strategy and we have picked up a further two points today, which is important in our battle in the Constructors’ Championship. In Barcelona, I hope that we can challenge for points.”
