Daniil Kvyat was happy to have a clean qualifying session at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, but was disappointed not to qualifying inside the top ten, feeling he could have found those extra few tenths of a second had he been able to get his tyres working properly.
The Scuderia Toro Rosso driver was ultimately 0.197 seconds shy of advancing, finishing the session down in thirteenth, but will lose three further places due to his penalty carried over from his incident with Kevin Magnussen in the Monaco Grand Prix.
Kvyat admitted it was during the qualifying session that he had felt at his most comfortable behind the wheel of his STR11, which gives him some confidence going into the race.
“I don’t think it was a bad qualifying session, but it’s just a shame that we didn’t find those extra couple of tenths that would’ve allowed us to get into Q3,” said Kvyat.
“This is the only frustrating part, as if we had been able to make our tyres work better I think we could’ve achieved it – I just don’t think we maximised our potential today.
“A P13 isn’t the best result we could’ve achieved, so we need to look into this now. At least qualifying was a clean session from my side, something which I needed, as up until this session I hadn’t felt totally comfortable in the car.
“Tomorrow we will start from even further behind as I have a three-position grid penalty from Monaco, but in the race anything can happen and we just need to keep our head down and take any opportunity that comes up.
“The car feels pretty decent and this gives me confidence to keep pushing. We just need to make sure we are proactive, as it will be a very open race strategy wise.”
