Chaotic race brings only 8th place for Toro Rosso
Even though Toro Rosso enjoyed strong performance throughout the entire weekend, the turn of events during the British Grand Prix only allowed Daniel Ricciardo to finish in the points.
Daniel Ricciardo, STR8-04, 8th: “That was a chaotic race, but for most of it I was in a reasonably strong position. I didn’t get the best of starts, but managed to make up for that, however I then lost a bit of time at both pit stops. Towards the end of the race, I had a very good pace but I think we might have done better with a different strategy when the last Safety Car came out as prior to that I could match the Force India and the Ferraris. At the end we were on used tyres and those who changed for a third time were able to pass me. Eighth is a good result, but I see it as a missed opportunity to score more points, because today we were quicker than the Ferraris so to finish behind them, particularly Massa who had a tyre problem, is a bit disappointing. I don’t know what was happening with the tyres, as I kept seeing people going off the track and there was debris everywhere. It was a little bit dangerous and we need to look into it. For my part, I just had normal degradation.”
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR8-03, DNF: “I got a bad start and that’s something we must look at carefully, as it compromised our performance. But it would not have made a big difference today, because of the problem I had when my tyre failed. I don’t know what happened, I did not feel any warning signs and it just let go under braking. I did manage to come back to the pits, fit new tyres and go out again, but the team immediately told me I had quite significant damage to the car, which in any case I could feel. The car was very difficult to drive from then on and in the end, the team took the decision to retire me, as there was no sense in carrying on. I did not feel in danger, but it’s just a shame that this sort of problem can waste a whole weekend’s work for the team. I am very upset about it and something needs to be done about it soon. So, from a results point of view, this is a race to forget, but I believe we showed the car was very quick and we can be in the fight in the coming races.”
Franz Tost, Team principal: “We had been hoping for better this afternoon. Both cars had poor starts which we need to investigate. After that, Jean-Eric had the tyre problem fortunately, not too far from the pit lane entry, but as a result of that, his car was badly damaged and eventually we decided to retire him because of that. As for Daniel, we had three issues: he lost time at the first pit stop when we struggled to get one wheel off the car and that lost him track position, then at the second stop, we had to delay his release as another car was coming in, again losing about three seconds. Finally, with the last Safety Car we had a difficult choice to make, as his tyres were old and we did not have others that were particularly new to put on, but the guys behind did pit for newer tyres and inevitably they managed to get past. On the positive side, we can be pleased that in performance terms, the car has clearly continued to improve and now we only have a few days to wait before we can try and turn that improvement into a more significant number of points at the Nurburgring.”
