Toro Rosso thank lady luck for double top 10
Both Toro Rosso drivers claimed they were fortunate to make it through to Q3, but yet they made it. In fact, the double Q3 qualifying made it the best qualifying for Toro Rosso so far at Canada.
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR8-03, 7th: “It was not an easy session and at one point I thought I wouldn’t even make it out of Q1! But we managed to improve a couple of things on the car and that helped. Generally, I feel comfortable in the wet, but that wasn’t the case today. The car wasn’t exceptional, but we got the most out of it I think. It was tough driving out there, but in the end it worked as is clear from the fact I got seventh place on the grid. It’s my best ever F1 qualifying, but I’m not going to be jumping for joy over a seventh place, as there are no points given out on Saturday. We still have the main part of the job to do tomorrow, when I will be trying to at the very least maintain this position and even do better. I’m a racing driver so I always want to go forward. It will be a difficult afternoon in very different conditions, but our long run pace was good yesterday so that’s a reason to be optimistic.”
Daniel Ricciardo, STR8-04, 10th: “The conditions were very difficult this afternoon, everything you can think of – wet, damp, greasy, oily…so we never really got going and we were quite lucky to make it into Q3 as I was never really comfortable or happy with the car on the intermediate tyre. I think there was an element of luck with me getting into the top ten today. If it’s dry tomorrow, I feel we can move forward up the order as I think that there are a few guys in front of us, who won’t have that pace in the dry so I’m definitely hoping the rain holds off tomorrow. However, I am happy that both Toro Rossos are in the top ten, which is a great achievement for the team.”
Laurent Mekies, Head of Vehicle Performance: “A bit like Monaco two weeks ago, this was a complicated qualifying session for everyone, especially the drivers. For the engineers on the pit wall it was important to put the cars out on track at the right time, while for the crew in the garage they had to follow carefully the many instructions they were receiving. Overall, things went well, as we got both our cars in Q3 which is a good step forward. Of course, you always want more and we feel we had the potential to do even a bit better in Q3. Nevertheless, these are two very good starting positions for tomorrow, when the weather forecast is for very different conditions and from where we are on the grid, we must be aiming to get a good points haul with both cars.”
