Toro Rosso
Carlos Sainz
“Well, the rain dance definitely worked and what a race that was! I’m super happy! To finish P6 after qualifying P15 yesterday is just amazing. I thought it was too risky to put the intermediates on and I asked the team to leave me out on extremes, and it worked! Today was all about a good strategy with no pit-stops for me and a strong pace with no mistakes. To do it in these difficult conditions just makes it even better. It was so hard to drive out there today – it was very, very difficult to keep the car on track at times! It was really tricky, especially in the aquaplaning areas like Turns 13 and 14 … Particularly during the Safety Car restarts, when you are racing at 300kph and you can’t see absolutely anything, it’s risky! Having said that, I really enjoyed it today, I love the rain – I’ve always been strong in the wet, since I’m a kid in go-karting and today was no exception. We can also be very proud as a team, as we were matching the pace of the top runners in the wet, which means that our car is actually a very good one and that we’ve done an excellent job all weekend – I’d like to congratulate everyone for this! To bring back home another 8 points when we were not expecting many more is great news, I’m over the moon - I have to say that this second half of the season is full of surprises for us and I definitely welcome them!”
Daniil Kvyat
“What a crazy race. My start was good and we switched to intermediate tyres at the right time, but then I suffered a puncture under the Safety Car, so I was last after I pitted, unfortunately. I didn’t give up and I was starting to come back up the grid, but at that point the car was very damaged… The reason for this is that during one of the restarts, Palmer crashed into me and, even though we stayed out because of the tricky conditions, the car was very difficult to drive. It’s a pity, because up until today I was satisfied with how my weekend was going and I was hoping for more.”
Franz Tost, team principal
“Taking into consideration our pace from yesterday’s qualifying session, I must say that we were very lucky and the rain really helped us today. Carlos drove a good race - to finish P6 and take home 8 points here in Sao Paulo is a great result! Daniil on the other hand was involved in an incident with Palmer, where he destroyed the front part of his diffuser. This had a big impact aerodynamically – he lost more than 20 points of downforce to be precise – and therefore he couldn’t do more. The team did a good job throughout the whole weekend and this will certainly give us a boost to face the last round of this Championship in Abu Dhabi.”
