Saturday: Toro Rosso couldn’t do better

Jean-Eric Vergne – 13th and 16th:

« I feel like I’ve gotten everything out of the car that we currently have, and I don’t think I could have done much better. We’ve improved our performance on the dry track and have gotten closer to those ahead of us. It’s always difficult to overtake here, but there are many factors to consider on this track, including tire degradation. As far as I’m concerned, the long stint we did this morning looked pretty good. Moreover, the gap between us and our rivals is always smaller during the race compared to Saturday. Since it seems we’ve managed to find a bit more performance here, I think we can hope for a good race tomorrow. »

Daniel Ricciardo – 16th and 18th:

It’s frustrating and a bit disappointing not to be in Q2. It’s the first time this season that I’ve been stuck in Q1, and it would have been nice to keep a clean sheet. My time on my first run with hard tires wasn’t too bad, but I wasn’t completely satisfied with the car. So I made some changes before the run on softs. It was immediately better, but as I was coming down the pit straight, a Lotus came out of the pits right in front of me and stayed there for most of my lap. From the outside, it might not look like traffic, but having someone just a few seconds ahead of you for an entire lap can really affect you, especially in qualifying where you need to give it your all. It didn’t help me. In terms of strategy, it was the right call to take just one set of softs because I’m confident that we could have made it through with a clean first lap. I’ll try to make up for it tomorrow.