Toro Rosso trying to prepare dry race
As is quite usual, the weather made consistent running difficult at Spa today, especially as teams are desperate to prepare a likely dry race. So were the Toro Rosso drivers, with each trying out a different type of dry tyre to get the maximum data points that was possible in the limited timeframe.
Jaime Alguersuari, STR6-01:
FP1: Best lap 2.06.583, pos. 9th, 16 laps
FP2: Best lap 1.52.911, pos. 14th, 25 laps
“It’s always nice to come to Spa, a track that all the drivers like as it’s a great feeling pushing the car to the limit here. Of course the changeable weather made life difficult, but we still got through a lot of work and acquired plenty of data to look at tonight. The car feels fast and I am sure there is more to come, as we did not run the softer, faster tyre in the dry today. I enjoy driving in the wet, even if it can make life complicated in the race. But, for ourselves, these types of unpredictable race can often be the ones where we get a good result. I am optimistic for the rest of the weekend and my aim will be to push hard and get in the points again on Sunday."
Sebastien Buemi, STR6-04:
FP1: Best lap 2.08.239, pos. 14th, 14 laps
FP2: Best lap: 1.53.009, pos. 15th, 25 laps
“I think this was a good day overall, as we were able to run in the wet, which is actually nearly always the case in Spa and also got a bit of dry track time. We ran the Medium slick which will be important for the race, although I did not drive on the Soft. As for some new elements we had on the car here, of course it is always difficult to assess on a wet track. So we still have a lot to do before tomorrow and the engineers will have to do their best overnight to analyse the data and decide which parts worked well. The forecast for tomorrow is for more rain, but with a dry Sunday predicted, choosing the right car set-up for tomorrow will not be an easy choice. Whatever the weather, driving at Spa is always a great experience and at least we got a little bit of time in the dry, which is always better in terms of getting a feeling for how the car is behaving.”
Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer:
“The weather made it difficult to evaluate some new components we were running today, but that is to be expected in Spa. Nevertheless, we had a good day, completing many laps on the intermediates and extreme wet tyres. We also did some decent runs on the Medium tyres with both cars. The rest of the weekend is certainly going to be interesting as the forecast for tomorrow is wet, while for Sunday, believe it or not, a dry race is predicted. The window for dry tyre use was limited to around 15 minutes today and the track was only completely dry for 5 of those, which is why we chose to concentrate on running the Medium tyre, rather than running two very short stints on both types of slick tyre.”
