Scuderia Toro Rosso's young Swiss rookie driver Sebastien Buemi made it through to the Q3 session in qualifying for tomorrow's Chinese Grand Prix at the third time of asking in the Ferrari-powered STR4. He will line up in 14th position on the grid tomorrow while making it a solid performance for the Faenza, Italy-based team Sebastien Bourdais will be two places further back.

Sebastien Buemi (STR4-01):

“I am really happy to be in Q3, as it’s more than I had expected. I don’t think I could have got any higher up the order. On low fuel, the car was very good, but we didn’t have any new Options left for Q3, so I had to do three flying laps on the Prime, so considering that, we can be satisfied with this. The team worked really well, doing a fantastic job to improve the car a lot since the start of the season and today it worked very well. Now, I am very much looking forward to tomorrow’s race”.

“I made a mistake, it’s as simple as that. I tried to optimise my line to take Turn 8, but I cut the apex too much and got on the marbles and the dirt on the left side and so the car never really turned in. Because of the dirt on the tyres, the next few corners were a disaster, losing me around half a second. Yesterday had been very promising but for whatever reason, today it didn’t work out. When you see my team-mate did two great laps, you can understand that the potential is there. Tomorrow, I will see what I can do, and even if it’s hard to make up places here, I’ll keep pushing.”