Vergne outqualifies Ricciardo for first time
Jean-Eric Vergne can be happy with qualifying today as for the first time this year he will be ahead of his Toro Rosso teammate Daniel Ricciardo. Neither driver however was all too happy as they both feel it could have been just a little better.
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR7-03:
Third Practice Session: Best lap: 1:23.833, pos. 7th, 14 laps
Qualifying: Best lap: (Q1) 1:24.362, (Q2) 1:23.265, pos. 15th
“I have mixed feelings about this qualifying, because from a personal point of view, I feel I did a better job than I have done in the other sessions this year and for the first time this year, I have out-qualified my team-mate. On the other hand, I think we were lacking something from the car side. Everyone in the team has worked hard to bring updates for this race, but the others have done the same and apparently a bit more than us. We still have some work do to, but on the positive side, we improved the car from yesterday and I feel that our pace over a long run is pretty good, so we will have to see what happens tomorrow. I don’t feel it is too unrealistic to try and aim for some points.”
Daniel Ricciardo, STR7-01:
Third Practice Session: Best lap 1:24.331, pos. 13th, 15 laps
Qualifying: Best lap: (Q1) 1:23.906, (Q2) 1:23.442, pos. 16th
“This was not an ideal session for me. From yesterday I felt we were trying to chase a better balance front and rear on the car and although we made a substantial change overnight, it did not have as much of an effect as we had hoped for in terms of lap time or feeling in the car. In Bahrain I had a great Saturday and a poor Sunday, so Iet’s hope it’s the other way round this time. I’m not going to dwell on today’s performance and now I’m just focussed on having as good a race as possible.”
Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer:
“It is clear from today’s classification that, even if we were able to make improvements to our car overnight, it was enough to be up with the quickest guys. It’s true that it is very tight in this part of the grid, but we were not able to get into Q3 and we can expect an equally tight fight in the midfield in tomorrow’s race. The pace of development is very high for everyone so we now need to push even harder to catch up. As far as the race is concerned, we have managed to produce something even from lower down the grid, so hopefully we can pick up a bit of pace and deliver a good performance.”
