Toro Rosso hopeful to fight for points
Toro Rosso drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne qualified in 15th and 18th positions for the Indian GP tomorrow. Seeing how they have managed to improve the car overnight, the team is confident these positions will allow them to fight for points during the race.
Daniel Ricciardo, STR7-04:
FP3: Best lap 1:27.374, pos. 16th, 21 laps
Q: Best lap: (Q1) 1:27.006, (Q2) 1:26.777, pos. 15th
“That was quite a good session for me and I was pretty happy with my laps, even if my last run in Q2 was a bit scrappy, but generally I pushed hard to get the time out of the car. I had hoped to get a bit closer to Q3, but looking at our pace this morning, we did make a small step forward for qualifying. The nature of this circuit means you have to be aggressive with it. We are looking alright for tomorrow as my lap time on used Options seems quite respectable.”
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR7-01:
FP3: Best lap: 1:27.711, pos. 17th, 20 laps
Q: Best lap: (Q1) 1:27.525, pos. 18th
“Yesterday, Daniel and I had tried different set-ups on our cars and mine was not working so well, so we made changes to the car overnight, which meant that this morning it was like starting from the beginning with a clean sheet of paper. It turned out to be quite complicated to find the right balance on the car so it was difficult for me. I am disappointed to have missed out on Q2 by just fractions of a second and so I will have to try and get a good race tomorrow. We have finished in the points starting lower down than this so why not hope for some more points tomorrow? If you look at Daniel’s performance today, the car definitely has the performance, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”
Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer:
“Jean-Eric has made a significant improvement since yesterday, when he was not happy with the car. We made several changes overnight to give him a better feeling and it worked, because he got into a good rhythm this morning. It’s a shame that he missed out on getting into Q2 by less than one hundredth of a second, but that’s what one can expect when the midfield is so close. Daniel also did a good job. Tyre management is tricky here as could be seen from the fact that most cars did a lot of laps in qualifying and overall, we are pretty much in the mix, ahead of some of our usual competitors and behind a few others. This means we can compete with them tomorrow and if we can confirm our usual race pace tomorrow, it should allow us to fight for points.”
