The two Toro Rosso drivers had a qualifying hour of contrasting fortunes today at India. Daniel Ricciardo was happy with his effort to start fifteenth, but Jean-Eric Vergne failed to progress beyond Q1 at a track he’s never been at before.
“That was quite a good session for me and I was pretty happy with my laps, even if my last run in Q2 was a bit scrappy, but generally I pushed hard to get the time out of the car. I had hoped to get a bit closer to Q3, but looking at our pace this morning, we did make a small step forward for qualifying. The nature of this circuit means you have to be aggressive with it. We are looking alright for tomorrow as my lap time on used Options seems quite respectable,” Ricciardo said.
Vergne was disappointed to miss out on Q2 having made progress in qualifying over the last few races.
“Yesterday, Daniel and I had tried different set-ups on our cars and mine was not working so well, so we made changes to the car overnight, which meant that this morning it was like starting from the beginning with a clean sheet of paper. It turned out to be quite complicated to find the right balance on the car so it was difficult for me. I am disappointed to have missed out on Q2 by just fractions of a second and so I will have to try and get a good race tomorrow,” he said.
“We have finished in the points starting lower down than this so why not hope for some more points tomorrow? If you look at Daniel’s performance today, the car definitely has the performance, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”
