STR Not Going Backwards, But...

While the Spanish GP didn't go quite as badly for Scuderia Toro Rosso as the previous two events did, the end result was, unfortunately, the same: The squad from Faenza went home without any further championship points to add to their 2012 season tally. 

Things looked fairly promising for a while, with Jean-Eric Vergne running in the 10th spot for a good portion of the race, and once making it to the 8th spot as others cycled through their pit schedules. In the end, however, the Frenchman would come home in the 12th spot, just ahead of team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, who was stuck in mid-pack all GP long.

Here are their post-race comments:

Daniel Ricciardo (13th):

“I did not have too great a start, but with our strategy we managed to make up a few places. There were some parts of the race where we ran quite strongly, but in the final stint on new Primes, we no longer had the pace we had in the previous stint. I had managed to look after the tyres quite well all the way to the end and produce relatively good lap times, but by then we had lost too much time. It had looked for a while as though we might have been able to challenge for tenth but it did not pan out that way. Overall, it was a bit up and down, but at least it showed some slight progress compared to Bahrain.”

Jean-Eric Vergne (12th):

“I had a really good start, moving up as high as tenth in a couple of laps. We decided to pit early to try and get ahead of some more guys and I came in from eighth place on lap 10. But then I was behind Di Resta and got a bit stuck. When I made my second stop for new Prime, I hoped I could have got past Di Resta through the stop but the pit stop was not the best and so unfortunately that did not work out and I was still behind the Force India. I lost more time towards the end of my third stint and then in the final one, on the Prime again, I was quicker than Daniel ahead of me. It took me a lot of time to get past. After that I tried to catch Webber and Hulkenberg, but the tyres were no longer good enough. Overall, it was disappointing, because I feel points were possible today, but for various reasons we did not manage it.”

Franz Tost (Team Principal):

“Jean-Eric had a reasonably good start, moving up several places on the opening lap, while Daniel lost one, before regaining his grid position a couple of laps later. During the race, in which they both ran three stop strategies, starting on the option before pitting for Prime, followed by Option and finishing on Prime, they both showed reasonable pace, fighting one another at times. However, once again this weekend, our qualifying pace proved to be the weakest point and until we start from higher up the grid, we will continue to struggle to bring home points. We have plenty of work to do, before heading for the Monaco circuit where, even if overtaking is much more straightforward than in the past, a good grid position is still absolutely vital.”

*****

In other STR-related news, Dietrich Mateschitz, founder of the Red Bull energy drink empire and owner of both STR and RBR, came out eariler this past week to publicly declare his unstinting support of his squads' Team Principals, in spite of the struggles both teams are experincing relative to last year's performance.  "Regarding Tost, for me there is no discussion — the same for Horner," he insisted. "I have never doubted either of them even for a second,"