Toro Rosso laments lack of pace
Toro Rosso drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne finished the Canadian GP in 14th and 15th positions respectively. While that is not bad compared to the starting positions, the team's story from the weekend is a simple lack of pace.
Daniel Ricciardo, STR7-04, 14th:
“I finished where I started. I got a good launch off the line but there was nowhere really for me to go, so I opted to go down the inside at Turn 1, which put me on the outside of Turn 2, where I tried to go around a few of the guys in front of me. But there was not as much grip there as I had expected and this cost me a few places. So from then on, I had some work to do as it put me on the back foot. From mid-race to the end, I could not match the pace of those I was racing against. Our pace is simply not enough to crack the top at the moment, so we must not get downhearted, but keep working hard to try and improve.”
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR7-03, 15th:
“This has not been a very good weekend for me on my first visit to Canada in terms of how things went at the track, although I enjoyed the circuit and the time I spent here. I qualified twentieth yesterday and finished fifteenth today. It’s definitely not an easy circuit with the walls so close and you have to push hard every lap and from that point of view the afternoon was okay, but of course the result is disappointing. Getting a drive through penalty for speeding in the pit lane did not help and it happened because, as I came in for a pit stop, I had some sort of problem with the pit lane speed limiter, which we will have to investigate. The strategy? I don’t think we could have done anything different.”
Franz Tost:
“We lacked pace this weekend, as was already evident in qualifying and was seen again this afternoon. We started both cars on the Option, with a plan to run them on different strategies: Ricciardo on a two-stop and Vergne on a one stop. However, we changed this after 15 laps, as Jean-Eric came on the radio to say he was losing grip. Therefore we brought him in earlier than planned and from then on, he was on a more conventional strategy. However, his drive-through penalty for pit lane speeding further complicated his race. Daniel had a good start, but lost positions at Turn 2. Therefore, from then on, there was a gap to the Force Indias from which he could never recover. His pace was not bad, as can be seen by the fact he set the fourth fastest race lap. We head back home to prepare for a busy couple of months in Europe and we need to push on with car development, as we are not where we want to be at the moment.”
