Red Bull disappointed not to be higher up the grid
Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel qualified in 8th place for tomorrow's Italian Grand Prix whereas team mate Daniel Ricciardo set the 9th best time. Neither driver is particularly happy about this outcome as the team expected 6th would have been possible.
Sebastian Vettel, 8th: “I think realistically anything from P5 to P10 was maybe possible, but it was very close. It’s a shame when you miss a couple of positions by just a few tenths or so, but we knew it would be like that going into today. When the gaps are close you always think you could have gone quicker, but that was probably it in terms of what we could do today. We should be quicker than McLaren tomorrow, I’d say we’ll be about the same as Ferrari, while Williams and Mercedes will likely be a bit too quick for us, but we’ll look after ourselves and see what happens in the race.”
Daniel Ricciardo, 9th: ”Even though we expected a tricky qualifying, I’m still disappointed. Ninth is not something to get really excited about. Seb’s in front, but he’s only in 8th as well and as a team we would have loved to have been a bit closer to the top five. We knew we wouldn’t challenge for the front two rows, but we thought that maybe sixth could be possible. Fingers crossed we’ve got better race pace tomorrow and we’ll try and do something with that.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal: “It’s no great surprise for us to be struggling a little in qualifying today. To make it through to Q3 was a result in itself and so to finish eighth and ninth in qualifying, when there’s one Ferrari and other than all Mercedes powered cars ahead, is not a huge surprise. We’re confident we’ve got better race pace for tomorrow and strategy will be crucial; hopefully we’ll have a good start and strong first few corners.”
Thierry Salvi, Renault Support Team Leader: “We knew it would be hard for us here as we are down on power relative to the competition and it hurts a lot at Monza. Both drivers extracted the maximum from the car but it’s hard to recover that sort of deficit. We do know however that our long run pace is much better and our drivers will fight a lot for points. Let’s keep focused and improve every detail we can within the allowed power unit items to improve the one lap pace.”
