Toro Rosso
Carlos Sainz
"P16 is not such a disappointing result if you look at where we were yesterday, so we can be a bit happy because yesterday we couldn’t go further than P19, so we’ve done some good work and made some progress. We battled our way through to Q2 and this was our target, so I’m satisfied to have got the most out of the car today. The only thing is that this isn’t where we’d like to be, when we’ve been fighting for Q3’s and P8’s all year long up until now… I’d like to be fighting for the top ten, but this is where we are right now, unfortunately. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow: it will certainly be a tough race but anything can happen!"
Daniil Kyvat
"During today’s qualifying session I felt quite comfortable in the car for the first time this weekend and I’d like to thank my mechanics and engineers for this. I was completing a good lap in Q1 but I unfortunately lost some time in the last corner during my final timed lap because of Grosjean – my team would have deserved him to look into his mirror! This cost me about two tenths, which is very annoying… I could’ve got into Q2. It’s a pity, but let’s see what we can do tomorrow – I don’t expect any miracles and for sure it will be a tricky race, but I will give it my best to finish as high up as possible."
Phil Charles, chief race engineer
"A disappointing qualifying for us today. Our recent trend for lowly speed trap rankings was always going to be a potential source of grumpiness here in Monza and that proved to be the case today. The poor straight-line performance was compounded by both drivers not getting the ‘rub of the green’. In more detail, Daniil had some car issues up until qualifying and was making a decent improvement in Q1 until he caught Grosjean going slowly in the last corner. Unfortunately, this cost him around 0.15s and a place in Q2. In fairness, some issues with our transponder system may have contributed to showing an ‘out lap’ instead of a ‘flying lap’, making it difficult for other teams to see what our drivers were doing. We are working hard to rectify this issue. As for Carlos, he did a decent job in Q1 but did not manage to put together his best lap in Q2, where a small mistake in the first chicane cost him quite dearly on his last run. A couple of places higher on the grid could have been possible. We have also had some gremlins on the chassis side recently and this makes today’s result even more painful. As engineers, drivers and mechanics, we have all worked hard this weekend to complete a programme of tests to try to understand this further. On the positive side, we are starting to make some progress with our issues and so we will come back motivated tomorrow to try to achieve the best result we can."
