Vergne secures career best 6th place finish
Jean-Eric Vergne has secured his best finish of his F1 career by ending the Canadian Grand Prix in 6th place for Toro Rosso. Team mate Daniel Ricciardo struggled with excessive oversteer and finished in 15th place.
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR8-03, 6th: “Incredible! I’m very happy. The best result for me of course, but also the highest finishing position since Vettel’s results for the team in 2008. It is even more satisfying, because it was a normal race in the dry, with no one going out in front of me so we achieved this position fair and square. It’s a great result for the team as we are making progress race by race and it’s very encouraging for the rest of the season. It wasn’t too complicated, because we had the pace to maintain that position, although we did not have the speed of those ahead. I passed Bottas and Raikkonen and from then I managed my race, keeping an eye on Sutil who was behind me for much of the time. That meant I could never ease up until the flag. After finishing eighth in Monaco, this result on another difficult track has boosted my confidence and I feel I have progressed as a driver. We must continue to push hard on the development of the car, starting with the next race at Silverstone, so that we can aim even higher than this.”
Daniel Ricciardo, STR8-04, 15th: “I got a really good start, making up two positions off the line and then I was on the outside for Turn 2, which meant Hulkenberg took me back. When he ran wide at the chicane, I was ahead of him again and I gained another place when Sutil went off. At that point, I felt we could have a good race, but after just four laps, the car was oversteering like crazy and I couldn’t manage the tyres anymore. As the race went on, we tried to improve the car balance and maybe we improved it a bit, but our pace was really slow. We didn’t change so much on the car since Friday, so why we were so slow is a mystery to me at the moment.”
Franz Tost, Team principal: “Jean-Eric’s sixth place is a fantastic result for him, the team here in Canada and everyone who works so hard behind the scenes in Faenza and Bicester. This is our best result since Daniel finished seventh in China and it is Jev’s best ever F1 finish position. Our car has been making steady progress over the last few races and that was confirmed yesterday, when despite the difficult conditions, we got both our cars into the top ten on the grid, even if Daniel then had to drop one place. Jev did a great job to keep his concentration on this difficult track, just as he did when he finished in the points in Monaco a fortnight ago and here, he also managed his tyres very well, which meant that once he had secured sixth place, he was able to keep it all the way to the flag. Daniel has had a tougher weekend and quite quickly in today’s race, he suffered a lack of grip at the rear and found the car unstable over the kerbs. But he can fight back from this disappointment and I expect both our drivers to challenge for points again in Silverstone in two weeks time.”
