Scuderia Toro Rosso's young rookie driver Sebastien Buemi once again got the better of his much more experienced team mate Sebastien Bourdais this afternoon in Bahrain although neither of the Ferrari-powered cars made it through the first qualifying session. The Swiss driver will line up in 17th position on the grid for tomorrow's Bahrain Grand Prix while the Frenchman will start from 20th and last place on the grid.

Sebastien Buemi (STR4-01)

“It should have been much better and I ought to have comfortably got through to Q2, but I made a mistake in the third sector. I’m disappointed with my performance as the car performed better than expected and with the sector times I was doing, maybe I should have been more cautious, just to make sure of getting into Q2. Track conditions were similar to this morning. Tomorrow, I still think we can have a good race, because this afternoon’s performance does not show what the car is capable of, so I am hopeful I can make up some places. How many is difficult to say. As for the tyres, it’s clear that the softer ones are those we will want to run the most in the race.”

“Losing track time this morning did not help. This afternoon, my first run was quite good, better than I thought and I was optimistic. But on my second run, we picked up a lot of understeer, which I corrected with the front wing for the final run. But suddenly the car went the other way, with massive oversteer. The car is extremely sensitive to the changes we make and we suffered with a lack of downforce and therefore grip. It is disappointing to finish so far down.”