Saturday: Scuderia Toro Rosso improves, but not enough
Bothered by balance problems yesterday, the Toro Rosso team corrected the issue, while noting the insufficiency of improvements to aim higher in qualifying. Jean-Eric Vergne made a mistake that relegated him to the bottom of the Q2 timesheet.
Daniel Ricciardo – 16th and 15th [14th on the grid]:
It’s a mixed qualification. When you’re fifteenth, you always think you could have done a bit better. Nevertheless, being realistic, I don’t think we could have reached Q3 today, so we need to address this because Senna is about three-tenths ahead of us, and even combining my three best sectors, it wouldn’t have been enough to catch him. It’s somewhat of a consolation not to be at the bottom of the Q2 time sheet, and now there’s a race ahead of us. It hasn’t been a bad day, and with the settings we’ve chosen, I think we could be in a good position to overtake other cars tomorrow. With a good race pace and two DRS zones, the afternoon should be interesting. The first corner is always a bit of a lottery, and from this part of the grid, I might be in a position to capitalize on any problems those in front of me might encounter.
Jean-Eric Vergne – 18th and 17th [16th on the grid]:
Honestly, I didn’t feel comfortable in the car most of the time because we never really found the best settings. In fact, qualifying was the best of my sessions so far. Additionally, I’m to blame for a small mistake on my fast lap, which cost me about two-tenths, after going over a curb while changing gears. On the positive side, we made a good step forward with the car since yesterday, which doesn’t show in the times because they are all very close.
