Kvyat excels in qualifying on home ground
Toro Rosso's Daniil Kvyat was overjoyed with his 5th place on the grid for tomorrow's Russian Grand Prix, improving on his best qualifying position in F1 to date. Team mate Jean-Eric Vergne struggled a bit in Q3 but still qualified 10th, making it a great opportunity for the team to score points during the race.
Daniil Kvyat, STR9-03, 5th: “It feels great securing P5 in today's qualifying here in my home country. It was already looking quite promising yesterday, so I'm very happy we could put it all together and achieve my best ever Qualifying result today. The car felt very good and everything worked out well, so well done to the team. I will do my best in tomorrow's race and I will definitely aim to finish the race at least in fifth position.”
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR9-01, 10th: “I was extremely slow today and I don’t know why. I lost time everywhere around the track and I’m wondering if there was a problem somewhere, which did not allow me to get the best out of the car. We will have a look at all the data, trying to understand what happened and be quicker again tomorrow.”
Phil Charles, Chief Race Engineer: "We are clearly very pleased, both drivers in Q3 is great, especially on a new track, and the team work well to put the set up together. Daniil has done an absolutely superb job throughout the three qualifying sessions, where he kept improving, using his head, refining his driving each lap and learning from the lap before. He was able to extract a little bit more each time and get better and better and that was the secret for him. As for Jev, he’s been unlucky, as something a little bit strange occurred during his Q3 and he could not manage to match his Q2 time. We will have some work to do tonight, as we need to understand what happened exactly. I feel sorry for him as he was looking really good and he would have deserved a better result today.”
Ricardo Penteado, Renault Sport F1 track support leader: "Needless to say that was a fantastic qualifying session for the entire team, and especially Daniil who is obviously delighted to be lining up fifth in front of his home crowd tomorrow. The fuel and energy management were both very good but we’ll keep working hard this evening to give both drivers all of the necessary tools with which to fight tomorrow. Finally, it was nice to out-qualify our big brothers over at Red Bull. But we’re not counting our chickens just yet!"
