Saturday: Toro Rosso will aim for points

Toro Rosso experienced its best Saturday in a long time, not to mention the somewhat anecdotal third free practice session. In these dreadful conditions for Formula 1 cars, the team secured a sixth place thanks to Sébastien Buemi and a 12th position with Jaime Alguersuari, making it their best result since the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Sébastien Buemi seems to be gaining momentum at the end of this season, and after impressive free practice sessions, he and his Toro Rosso confirmed their pace in qualifying. Jaime Alguersuari is not far behind for his seventh Grand Prix, and despite his young age, the Spaniard managed this surprisingly long and difficult session well, staying relatively close to his teammate in terms of performance. His only mistake, which was also the team’s, was not fitting the intermediate tires like most drivers at the end of Q2. Alguersuari was 0.2 seconds behind Buemi in Q1 but ended up 2 seconds behind him in Q2. He will start from the sixth row. The team will aim for points on Sunday no matter what.

Sébastien Buemi – 7th and 6th:

Obviously, I am happy since sixth place is the best qualification I’ve achieved so far. It was a difficult session, and I just stayed in the car trying to stay focused. Our goal for tomorrow is to score points. But with this kind of weather, anything can happen. I would prefer the conditions to be dry tomorrow because since the beginning of the weekend, we have been fast regardless of the conditions. I will give it my all whether it is dry or not.

Jaime Alguersuari – 13th and 12th:

It wasn’t bad, and I’m happy with my results. There was a lot of water, and it would have been easy to end up in the wall. So my priority was to stay on the track and not make any mistakes. Visibility was very poor in these conditions, so I hope we have better conditions for the race. To access Q3, we would have needed to switch to intermediate tires. We stuck with extreme tires, but the final result is still good.

Laurent Mekies – Chief Engineer:

This is our best qualifying result this season with our second consecutive Q3 for Bemi and the second consecutive Q2 for Alguersuari. At Suzuka, we showed we were fast thanks to an aerodynamic upgrade. Here, the team and drivers gave it their all together in what was a difficult session to manage. Sébastien did a really good job securing 6th place, and Jaime did well reaching Q2 in these dreadful conditions. But the race is what matters, and I think it will be a challenging afternoon. Today, we made an encouraging first step, and we must convert it into points tomorrow.