Daniel Ricciardo admitted the conditions didn’t favour Toro Rosso on Friday at Interlagos. The Australian pointed out that the STR7 hasn’t gone well in hotter temperatures this season but didn’t seem to concerned after practice today, especially with rain likely to arrive before the race.
“We must try and learn from today, but we have to bear in mind that the conditions could be very different when it really matters on Sunday. The two sessions could have been better, but hot conditions have not been the most suitable ones for us this year. All the same, we tried various different set-ups, splitting the work between me and Jev to learn as much as we could. It’s going to be a long night trying to evaluate everything and then see what the weather does. In performance terms it would have been nice to do better, but in terms of knowledge I think we gained a lot. The 2013 tyres? They felt a little bit different, but nothing dramatic. Let’s say we didn’t find any negatives with them.”
Teammate Jean-Eric Vergne says the hot conditions make it tough for him to look after the tyres and is looking forward to a wet race on Sunday.
“I don’t have much to say as we seemed to struggle a lot today to get the car working properly. That was mainly linked to the high temperature which did not suit us and made life hard for the tyres. We will have to work very hard tonight to come up with ways of improving the car for qualifying, even if we expect Sunday’s race to be a wet one. Rain would definitely suit us better. We had some 2013 tyres to try and we had some sensors fitted this morning to see what they did. It’s interesting to see for next year as the shape of the tyre is slightly different which will have an impact on the aero.”
