Report – Saturday – Did Toro Rosso remain in 2007?

The small Scuderia, better known as Toro Rosso, showed little in qualifying. The team made a leap at the start of the season, but the lack of updated cars in 2008 is becoming more and more apparent: The STR03 should arrive at the next European Grand Prix.

Vettel didn’t even manage to get past Q1, and he is much slower than his teammate, Sébastien Bourdais. The Frenchman was at the forefront on the Red Bull side, delivering good laps, but a mistake in an otherwise perfect lap forced the four-time ChampCar champion to a 16th place after qualifying for the second phase for the second consecutive time.

Sébastien Bourdais – 6th and 16th:

« Yesterday, I said that if everything went well, we would have the opportunity to reach Q2. And there you have it. I also achieved a very good 13th time in Q1 even though I had a lot of traffic ahead of me and the lap wasn’t perfect… »

« I did everything in my last lap to try to reach Q1. We tried to fix the understeer with different setups but while my lap was very good, I made a mistake by letting the car go off in the second sector. From there, I aborted my last lap. The grip and thus the balance is still not perfect… »

Sebastian Vettel – 16th and 18th:

« I struggled with the single-seater, especially in the first sectors. As a result, I had trouble feeling confident in the car and when I qualified, I was missing a few tenths to access Q2. »

« It’s very tight and Bourdais easily qualified for Q2, so I was missing something today, which I will try to fix for tomorrow. »

Giorgio Ascanelli – Technical Director:

« If we come to Spain, it’s almost just to see Alonso qualify on pole! For our part, the single-seaters have proven reliable so far, and in terms of performance, we’ve done what we can with what we have… »