Ricciardo takes point in final race for Toro Rosso
Daniel Ricciardo took one final point for Scuderia Toro Rosso before his moving on to Red Bull Racing in 2014. His team mate Jean-Eric Vergne meanwhile struggled after a difficult start and finished 15th.
Daniel Ricciardo, STR8-01, 10th: “The conditions were very difficult with the occasional drop of rain. From the cockpit, it’s actually quite difficult to judge how much rain there is. You see a few drops on your visor, look at the guy in front of you and if he doesn’t go off, you assume it’s dry. We were not very quick from the start and I was struggling with cold graining on the front right. We did try and rebalance it during the race, but we struggled in terms of pure pace, so I was quite happy to come away with a point. At midnight tonight I become an Infiniti Red Bull Racing driver, but for now I just want to say thank you to everyone at Scuderia Toro Rosso, here at the track, back in Faenza and at our wind tunnel for two fantastic years. Thanks guys!”
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR8-04, 15th: “Catastrophic starts for both Toro Rossos today and after that, I had a car that was very difficult to drive. I know it’s the same for everyone as it was the first time we ran here in the dry, but the balance of my car just wouldn’t allow me to push. It improved in the final two stints but it was a real struggle. As for the incident with Maldonado, I came up the inside of him at Turn 1 and he didn’t leave me any room, so we touched and he spun. This season has had more bad times than good ones for me, but we are all determined to work very hard over the winter to start next season with a better car.”
Franz Tost, Team Principal: “Our race was compromised immediately off the grid as both cars got poor starts. This cost us most of the benefit of yesterday’s very good qualifying result. We therefore had poor initial pace, dropping down the order and it was worse for Jev than for Daniel. We decided to take Daniel out of traffic quite early, ignoring the risk of rain and he then made up some ground. In the middle of the race, everyone was holding off making the final stop because of the threat of a wet track, at which point Daniel’s tyres had done a lot of laps. He managed this situation very well and we made an early stop which got him ahead of a couple more cars, after which he looked after his tyres well enough to take the point for tenth, with both Force Indias and a Sauber behind us. After Jev got stuck in traffic following the start, he also complained about car balance and we only got him out of traffic for the final two stints, when his times improved to a similar level to his team-mate’s. It’s nice to end the year with a point, even if we had been aiming for rather more than one at the start of the day.”
