Scuderia Toro Rosso
heads to Istanbul this weekend confident that the team has
been able to learn from Monaco a week-and-a-half ago and
that it will take a step forward in
terms of performance. Both drivers, Sebastien Bourdais and
Sebastien Buemi, like the Turkish race track and are looking for a strong
showing from the Red Bull-sponsored, Ferrari-powered STR4
car.
After the first six
rounds of the 2009 F1 World Championship Bourdais is
fifteenth in the drivers' championship standings with 2
points, and the former triple ChampCar title winner one
place behind team mate Buemi who has 3 points. In the
constructors' championship Scuderia Toro Rosso has 5 points
which means the Faenza, Italy-based is within one point of
the BMW Sauber team.
Sebastien
Bourdais: "The
Monaco weekend went pretty well, bringing home a point,
which is always good for morale, especially at such a
prestigious race. It was a good race and I hope we can
continue to move forward with this momentum, starting in
Turkey. We have begun to get a better understanding of what
we are doing with this car, which should allow us to get
more performance out of it now. In Istanbul, we will run the
car in a way which we hope will provide the key to a good
step forward in terms of extracting all the potential out of
our package. So far this year, it was often a case of
waiting for Friday practice to see how the car would work
and then establishing a set-up, but this weekend we will
start with a good idea of what we want and that should see
us being able to make more progress over the rest of the
weekend. It’s always good to arrive at a race track in these
conditions. As for the Istanbul track, it’s fun to drive,
even if it lacks some grip. The stand out corner is Turn 8,
where you need to have a car that is stable over the bumps
which characterise the corner, but Istanbul isn’t just about
the one turn and pure performance involves having a car that
is well balanced everywhere."
Sebastien Buemi:
"I’ve raced here twice in GP2, finishing on the podium in
third place last year, so I have good memories of Turkey. I
like the circuit: very modern, very fast and featuring the
famous Turn 8, the quadruple left-hander, which is rather
special. I have always felt comfortable here, so I don’t
have too many worries and I hope that will be the case this
year, for my first time in F1. Our car is going better and
better, even if it’s true that I’ve had three difficult
weekends at the last three races: in Bahrain I was unlucky
to pick up a piece of Kubica’s car that got wedged in my
front wing, in Spain someone drove into me and in Monaco I
made a mistake. At the moment when these things happen, I
find them hard to deal with, but afterwards I don’t let them
bother me. I tell myself I’m in Formula 1 trying to do the
best I can, so there is no point in beating yourself up over
what’s happened. I just want to move forward and I hope
that, starting with Turkey, things will improve and we can
look to score points again. I think that with what we
learned about the car in Monaco, we should be able to use
all its potential now and Istanbul should provide a clearer
picture of where we really are in the order. We definitely
need to do better than at the last three races!"
