Somewhat Disappointing Qualifications Results

After showing such impressive pace in the Friday practice sessions, the folks at Scuderia Toro Rosso have to feel at least a bit let down over how qualifying went on Saturday. While they managed to pick up even a bit more speed in FP3, it is clear that most of the mid-pack squads that had previously trailed them found enough to leap-frog ahead of them when it mattered most.  

Jean-Eric Vergne would not survive Q1, having flat-spotted a tire early on which gave his STR7 a vibration that hampered his effort. He will start from the 18th grid spot tomorrow. "Of course I am a bit disappointed with this result. I made a mistake at the first corner, having a massive lock-up on a front wheel. That created so much vibration that I had to come back to the pits and that was my qualifying over."

Daniel Riccardo advanced to Q2, but could do no better than taking the 15th grid spot. "I think we are more or less where we thought we would be, as we expected Q3 to be a more difficult target here than in Melbourne. I am reasonably happy with the lap I did, which was pretty clean and I am not kicking myself thinking I could have done better. Hopefully, we have a good package for the race and I will be trying to nose into the points."

Publicly, at least, Chief Engineer Laurent Mekies is taking it all in stride: "In terms of the result, it’s not as good as last week. We are racing in the same mid-field group with Williams, Sauber and Force India and while in Australia we were at the top end of that group, here we are not. We are only talking about two to three tenths of a second from one end of the group to the other. That means we still have every chance to do well tomorrow."