Toro Rosso cars wary of tyre degradation
Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastian Buemi did the best possible qualifying session this afternoon, although that still means only 16th and 18th positions. Jaime did the best he could while Sebastian stayed on the prime tyres to save a set of options for the race.
Jaime Alguersuari, STR6-01:
FP3: Best lap 1.23.998, pos. 17th, 15 laps
Qualifying Best lap: (Q1) 1.23.285, (Q2) 1.22.979, Pos. 16th:
“I think I did the maximum I could today, given that we were saving the tyres for the race. I believe our car set-up for the race can be very effective, therefore I am confident for tomorrow. I don’t know if points will be possible, but let’s see how the race evolves. Anything can happen tomorrow, with seventy laps and many different strategies, so I hope that ours is the one that pays off!”
Sebastian Buemi, STR6-04:
FP3: Best lap 1.25.061, pos. 18th, 19 laps
Qualifying Best lap: (Q1) 1.24.070, Pos. 18th (23rd with penalty)
“The fact I have a five place grid penalty carried over from last Sunday’s race at the Nurburgring conditioned our approach to this afternoon’s qualifying session. We chose not to use any Super Soft tyres today, deciding to save them for tomorrow, which means I have three new sets of them for the race. With high tyre degradation at this track, that will be an important factor and I hope it will allow me to work my way up the order. There is a big difference between tyres that are completely new and those that have done even just a few laps, therefore the key will be to try and overtake cars as soon as possible.”
Giorgio Ascanelli:
“Jaime did a good job, even allowing for the fact that we gained one place as Maldonaldo did not go out in Q2. He looked quite close to those ahead of him in Q1, running first the Prime then the Option, but then the gap was re-established in Q2, when he made a single run on the Option. With Buemi, given his five place penalty, we opted to ignore grid position and concentrate on saving tyres for the race, which is what we have done. He only ran on the Prime tyre this afternoon which gives him three new sets of Option for the race. Normally, we say we look better in terms of our race pace than in qualifying and yesterday when we ran in both conditions in free practice that was the case. However, we did not get it quite right on low fuel, therefore it is hard to be sure what is the situation at this type of track. Overtaking is difficult here, so we will have to be creative with our strategy and try and make the tyres last.”
