Team Talk - Saturday in Spain

Toro Rosso

Carlos Sainz
"I’m very happy with today’s qualifying! We’ve been strong the whole weekend so far and today’s P8 was the maximum we could hope for, and we did it – I’m very satisfied with my lap in Q3. Tomorrow’s race will be a very interesting one, and to start from the fourth row in front of my home crowd is something I’m looking forward to. To race on home soil is always special, something that I’ve been dreaming of since I was four years old, when I started to watch Formula 1. To finally be here, living the dream, is an awesome feeling and I will try and enjoy myself and put on a good show for all the fans out there."

Daniil Kvyat
"I’m still getting used to the team and the car, so it hasn’t been the easiest of qualifying sessions. To be out in Q2 isn’t what one wants to see, but the general feeling is positive, I feel better and better in the car and in the future we will do better – I’m just not a very patient guy! We need to analyse and find where we could’ve done better to improve very quickly for the next races. Starting in P13 is not too bad, so we will do our best to score some points tomorrow – the race is very long, let’s see where we end up."

James Key, Technical Director
"It’s been an interesting and busy weekend for us so far. We’ve been working hard with our new engineering structure and integrating Daniil back into the team. We are working very well with him and he has had a lot to adapt to. With every run he has done he has got more used to the car and continually found more performance, and we are getting the set-up more towards what he is looking for. Effectively we are trying to do the work of winter testing in the space of a race weekend! However Daniil’s learning curve has been very steep and he is settling in well. I think after Sunday’s race and a day of testing next week we will be back up to speed.

"Q1 was pretty straightforward for both Daniil and Carlos, although we went for a second run with Daniil just as a precaution, which unfortunately was not required. This left him with only one completely new set of soft tyres in Q2, although the risk of not running again was a little too high at the time. Maybe that put him at a bit of a disadvantage and he just missed out on Q3.

"Carlos did exactly what he needed to do today and got through to the top 10 as planned. We knew we wouldn’t be able to compete with the first three teams because they are a bit too far ahead, but we battled well and ended up just behind a Williams. He has had a very clean and focused weekend so far and I am sure he will carry that through to tomorrow. P8 is a decent place to start and we will target moving forwards from there, as our race pace is typically better than our qualifying pace. The good work Carlos has done with tyre management so far this weekend will help that too. The target is to get both cars in the points."