Scuderia Toro Rosso will go into this afternoon's Turkish Grand Prix requiring a healthy dose of good fortune if it is to get either of its drivers anywhere near the points after the little Italian team continued to struggle for competitiveness during yesterday's qualifying session. The team has suffered an unexpected loss of form since the Monaco Grand Prix a fortnight ago and neither experienced former triple ChampCar title winner Sebastien Bourdais or his young rookie team mate Sebastien Buemi has been able to get the Ferrari-powered STR4 car to work satisfactorily on any of the Bridgestone compounds available this weekend.

In the end both drivers were quickly knocked out of the proceedings in the Q1 qualifying session yesterday and they never looked like making progress. Bourdais was the slowest driver out on the Istanbul Park circuit, and his best of the 9 laps he ran in 1:28.918 left him as the final qualifier while Buemi's quickest time of 1:29.708 allowed him to pip his team mate and the Force India-Mercedes of Giancarlo Fisichella to take eighteenth slot. Both of the Toro Rosso drivers were however well shy of the cut-off time in Q1 which was set by Adrian Sutil (Force India-Mercedes) in 1:28.278. Joining the two Toro Rosso cars and Fisichella in the Q1 drop zone were reigning F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes) and Nelsinho Piquet (Renault).

Sebastien Buemi (STR4-03)

“We had a very tough time, especially with the soft compounds, as we were never able to get the most out of them. So the best thing we can do now is think hard about the race and ensure we have the best possible strategy. It will be a difficult afternoon, starting so far back and managing the tyres, specifically the inevitable degradation on the front right. Okay, starting eighteenth I’m not really thinking of a points finish, but we will still give it our best shot.”

“All I know is that we lack grip and we are off the pace, even being two tenths off Seb (Buemi.) My first run wasn’t too bad, but I had degradation on my next one. Then we changed the tyre pressures a bit, but it seemed that as the session developed the Option began to work better and I was running the Prime which we felt suited us better. We’ve gone backwards a bit this weekend which is hard to take. In the race, I don’t think the difference between the tyres will be that much and in any case, it’s not just the tyres that are our problem this weekend.”