Saturday: Points targets for Toro Rosso tomorrow

Sébastien Buemi – 13th and 13th

«I am quite happy with my performance during these qualifications, even if 13th is not the position I was hoping for. But we were very close to Q3, which is the most important thing. Being just two-tenths off a top 10 is a sign of the improvement of the car. I am sure I could have done a bit better, but it looks promising for tomorrow, especially since we were able to do a long stint this morning during free practice 3, which gave us a good idea of the tire degradation. We should therefore be well prepared for the race, during which we have every reason to think that we can achieve a good result.»

Jaime Alguersuari – 12th and 11th

« We were only three-tenths away from Q3, so we can say it was a good qualifying session for the team. We did a good job, starting yesterday when the car was good in the wet. I think we have a better understanding of the elements introduced at Suzuka and we made the most of them. I was also encouraged by the long stint I completed, as there wasn’t as much tire wear as expected, so that shouldn’t be a problem tomorrow. I expect a lot from the race; I hope to score points and thus reduce the gap with Sauber, who will start behind us. As for the incident with Vettel this morning, it is clear to me: he was on a long stint, he was on his fastest lap, so I let him pass. Then he made a mistake, so he was behind me, but he caught up with me again. Having already let him pass once, I went back to a good lap on my long stint. You can’t keep letting a driver pass all the time. I know it could have been easier for him if I had moved aside, but I also have work to do to gather data, because we had no information on long stints due to yesterday’s rain. I’m sorry about that, but they also need to understand my point of view. »

Giorgio Ascanelli – Technical Director

I am delighted with our performance today, because it was a good result considering that we didn’t receive any gifts from potential failures of other teams. Perhaps we could have extracted a bit more from our package, but there’s no need to worry about that. We might have placed one of our cars in Q3 and missed it by a hair, even though we should note that in this part of the grid, there are three cars within two tenths. I am pleased with how the cars and drivers managed to have clear laps in this session. It will be an interesting race tomorrow. We expect strong tire wear obviously, but the sun and possible overcast weather could affect that. I must commend Pirelli for being ambitious in their choice of the soft and super soft tires, for which they were rewarded with mild temperatures and overcast skies: both tire compounds worked well, and tomorrow we’ll see that the track temperature will be another predominant factor.