Franz Tost admitted that Scuderia Toro Rosso realised early that they were not going to be as strong at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve as they had been at the Circuit de Monaco two weeks earlier, but it was pleasing to leave Canada with another points finish for Daniil Kvyat.
After impressing in Monaco with a seventh and eighth place finish for Kvyat and Alexander Albon, the team were more on the back foot in Canada, with neither driver making it through to the top ten shootout in Qualifying, and it was more of a struggle on race day as well for both drivers.
“From the beginning of this weekend, our performance showed we weren’t on the same level as in Monaco,” admitted team principal Tost. “Nevertheless, the engineers and drivers did a very good job to compensate for the deficiencies we had.
“We started the race from P10 and P13 and both drivers had relatively good starts.”
Unfortunately, a good start for Albon put him in the middle of a three-car battle into turn one, with Sergio Pérez on one side and Antonio Giovinazzi on the other. Ultimately, three into one doesn’t go, and Albon lost his front wing after contact from Giovinazzi, with the delay in the pit stop all but ending his chances of a good result.
“Unfortunately, Alex had a collision with Giovinazzi where he lost the front wing, so we had to pit him early to change to a new one and move him onto the base tyre,” said Tost.
“At this point, the race was more or less over for Alex because he lost too much time after the collision, so we retired him to save mileage on the PU.”
On the other side of the garage, Kvyat was having a much better day, although it was only late in the race when he found the pace to challenge for the points, with a good pass on Carlos Sainz Jr. into turn one ensuring he left Canada with one point for tenth place.
Tost felt the team did all they could with the resources they had in Canada, but work needs to be done ahead of the upcoming races to bring both cars back into points contention.
“Daniil had a fantastic race and defended his position very well against Pérez at the start, and towards the end of the race, he was able to increase his performance which enabled him to pass others and score a point,” said Tost.
“I think this was the maximum we were able to achieve here, so we have to analyse all the data and figure out where we were losing here in Canada compared to others, to come back in the upcoming races with a stronger performance and get both cars finishing in the points.”
