Toro Rosso Saturday Report

GP Australia

First Q3 since 2009

Sebastien Buemi

“I am very happy to be back in Q3, as we had not been there since 2009. In the end, I had no more new tyres, but all the same, I have to say thanks to the team for doing such a good job and it shows we are on the right road. Let’s hope we can continue to do well in the race tomorrow and from what we have seen of our pace in free practice, I think that should be possible. I could not have hoped for a better start to the season, being among the ten fastest cars on the grid. My quick lap was good and I don’t think I could have done any better.”

Jaime Alguersuari

“I am quite happy, although I have to congratulate my team-mate on doing a better job than me. This is a good result for the team and promising for tomorrow, when my main target will be to score points. The team did a great job during the winter to produce a fast car and this is the first result of that, which I hope we can continue to improve on in the next few races.”

Giorgio Ascanelli

“Before the session, I expected to get this result. We are just a sniff ahead of Force India, with whom I expect we will be fighting all year. However, I am not going to cry about Adrian Sutil’s misfortunes. When analysing the result, we have to consider that Williams had a difficult session, while Sauber is solidly ahead of us. Seb and the team did a very good job, managing the tyres, going out at the right time and generally running the session very well.

People have been singing the praises of our car and this is a result of some bold choices we made on the design front. However, we are currently the eighth team and we will have to continue to work hard to try and stay ahead of the others. Jaime did a reasonable job and he has complained of understeer all day, which was not the case yesterday. Twelfth and so close to his team-mate is not a disappointment and we simply did not get the best out of his car today.”

Sebastien Buemi (STR6-02)
FP3: Best lap 1.27.008, pos. 11th, 17 laps
Qualifying: Best lap 1.27.066, pos. 10th

Jaime Alguersuari (STR6-04)
FP3: Best lap 1.27.066, pos. 13th, 14 laps
Qualifying: Best lap 1.26.103, pos. 12th