After qualifying inside the top ten for the Australian Grand Prix, Daniil Kvyat was pleased that he was able to put a good lap together to qualify ninth, although he missed out on eighth to team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr by 0.025 seconds.
The Russian, who has failed to start in Australia for the past two years due to technical issues, praised his Scuderia Toro Rosso team for a so far ‘flawless’ weekend at Albert Park after arriving at the circuit still with work to do after a disjointed pre-season testing programme.
Kvyat feels the STR12 gives him a lot of confidence, and is aiming to turn his top ten start into a points finish during Sunday’s race.
“It’s good to get through to Q3 with both cars, we can be happy with our Saturday,” said Kvyat. “We missed a bit of test time a few weeks ago in Barcelona, so we came here still improving through the whole of yesterday.
“We did a good jump overnight and we were able to put a good lap together in today’s qualifying, which was very tight! Q1 was difficult for everyone because the track always does what it wants here, so we had to pick-up information and learn very fast, which we did.
“The team has been flawless so far this weekend, so I’d like to congratulate everybody for the great job done so far. Therefore, I can say we’re pretty satisfied after today’s result; we’ve made a good step forward, the car gives us confidence, is quite fast and we can look forward to converting this into something positive in tomorrow’s race.”
