Toro Rosso leaves Barcelona empty handed
Scuderia Toro Rosso will leave Circuit De Catalunya without points, even though Jean-Eric Vergne looked back and was convinced points could have been possible. Daniel Ricciardo meanwhile acknowledged some weaker moments in the race were too much to get points at the finish.
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR7-03, Race finish: 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.”
Daniel Ricciardo, STR7-01, Race finish: 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.”
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.”
