Toro Rosso confident that dry weather pace is better
Daniel Ricciardo enjoyed a fruitful qualifying and eventually put himself into 11th position for tomorrow's German GP. His team mate at Toro Rosso, Jean-Eric Vergne narrowly missed out on moving through to Q2 and qualified in 18th position. He will however more up due to penalties for other drivers.
Daniel Ricciardo, STR7-04:
FP3: Best lap 1:17.238, pos. 14th, 25 laps
Q: Best lap: (Q1) 1:16.516, (Q2) 1:39.789, pos. 11th
“I am satisfied with that performance. Eleventh is quite good for us, on the edge of Q3. Of course, I’m a little bit disappointed that I missed out on the top ten, but in general this result puts us in a good position for tomorrow and hopefully we can get our nose into the points, even if the race is dry as predicted. As for my quick lap, I actually improved during the run, because even though I was on Intermediates, I seemed to find more grip when there was more water on the track. For that reason, my best lap came right at the end and it was a case of changing lines through some corners from lap to lap as you tried to work out which lines worked best in the conditions. It was a challenging session and I had fun out there this afternoon.”
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR7-03:
FP3: Best lap: 1:17.419, pos. 16th, 23 laps
Q: Best lap: (Q1) 1:16.741, pos. 18th
“Only two tenths between me and P13 in Q1 which is very close and in fact I think I lost two tenths in the final corner, although apart from that, I feel my lap was quite good. I am disappointed that the rain arrived just a bit too late for me. We went out immediately on the Option as we expected rain to fall in Q1 itself. I am still hopeful of having a good race tomorrow as we seem a bit more competitive in the dry than we were two weeks ago. With the rain affecting several sessions, we have not done as much running on the dry tyres as usual and seeing how they behave will be an interesting factor tomorrow.”
Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer:
“A very entertaining qualifying and a great show for everyone watching. In these conditions, it’s always going to be very tight and Jean-Eric missed the Q2 window by around 6 hundredths and then we missed the cut into Q3 with Daniel also by 6 hundredths. So it was an afternoon of mixed fortunes, with P11 being a good result for Daniel, while with Jev it’s a shame he just missed out on a chance to run in the wet Q2. Tomorrow is reckoned to be dry for the race and it will be interesting to see the fight in the mid-field, as we have one car at the head of this group and the other at the back of it. This weekend is looking like a carbon-copy of Silverstone with a wet Friday and a dry Saturday morning, followed by a wet qualifying, with the race expected to be dry. We will be trying our very best and points have to be our target, at least with Daniel.”
