Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda had a tricky day at the 2019 Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, as neither of the two drivers was able to make it out of the second session of qualifying. Both drivers expressed concern, as Pierre Gasly only managed to qualify twelfth and Daniil Kvyat found himself in fourteenth.
Kvyat explained that during the final qualifying session, at Yas Marina Circuit, his car did not feel good as he drove around the circuit. He did express, he never found the best grip with his tyres. But he did manage to get his car through to the second session of the final qualifying.
“The car didn’t really feel great today and I was sliding around in Qualifying. I never really found good grip on the tyres and the car didn’t click. The only decent lap I got in was the first lap of Q2, the rest I just had a bad feeling in the car.“
The Russian made it clear he was aiming for a better day on the track after qualifying in twelfth but will start in thirteenth after AMG-Mercedes Petronas‘ Driver Valterri Bottas‘ penalty. Kvyat explains that he feels he can move up the grid with his strategy of free tyres.
“We hope things will be better tomorrow, the race is different to Qualifying, you can play with the strategy and, if everything works well, there’s always a chance to move up the grid.”
Gasly expressed a similar opinion to his teammate, as he explained he felt it was a tricky opinion and that the team were not as competitive as the team expected to be. However, he explained that eleventh is a good place to qualify and having free tyre choice is additionally good for him,
“It was a bit of trickier session for us in Qualifying compared to the rest of the weekend. We were sliding a lot and we weren’t as competitive as this morning. We’ll try to understand the reason for this tonight, but all in all it’s not bad because we start from 11th position tomorrow and have a free choice of tyres.”
He did explain about the tyres, saying he knew what was going to happen to the soft tyres as their degradation was high. He added that he is hopeful for the strategy as his long runs looked strong in his Toro Rosso.
“We knew we had more degradation with the Soft compound, so hopefully this will play in our favour during the race as our long runs looked strong yesterday.”
