italiaspeed.com

The Toro Rosso's of Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari will line up fifteenth and eighteenth on the grid for tomorrow's season-opening grand prix in Bahrain after final qualifying saw only the Swiss driver make it out of the Q1 session. Alguersuari was the fastest of the drivers to miss the first cut, failing to go through along with the three new teams, Virgin, Lotus and HRT. Buemi went on to edge out the BMW Sauber of Kamui Kobayashi, like Torro Rosso using a Ferrari engine, and the Renault of rookie driver Vitaly Petrov.

Sebastien Buemi (STR5-01)

“It’s pretty much what we expected and we appear to be fighting with Petrov, the Saubers and the Williams. As always I felt I could have done better, but not by much, maybe two tenths. Tomorrow for the first race, I would hope to finish in the points, which this year means getting to tenth. That would involve moving up five places, which is not an impossible task, given that it will be a long race and anything could happen.”

Third Practice Session: Best lap 1.56.295, pos. 15th, 17 laps; Qualifying Session: Best lap 1.56.265, pos. 15th

Jaime Alguersuari (STR5-03)

“We hoped to be in Q2 but I made a mistake on my fastest lap on the soft tyres. The grip level was quite low, I was pushing hard and it caught me out, going too fast into a turn. There is room for improvement of course and I hope I can have a good race tomorrow and move up the order a bit, but it looks like it will be tough to score points. We will have to do better next time.”

Third Practice Session: Best lap 1.56.504, pos. 16th, 16 laps; Qualifying Session: Best lap 1.57.071, pos. 18th

Giorgio Ascanelli (Technical Director)

“I am disappointed with the fact we were not able to give Sebastien any running yesterday, but today, I am actually quite happy that we did better than seventeenth and eighteenth, which is what I had expected. Jaime had traffic and made a mistake, which can happen, so he is capable of better. With only limited running in free practice, Seb didn’t get the best out of himself and the car, but I am happy with what both drivers did. There is no reason to expect a better race pace, but it will be a tough afternoon during which I hope we will be sustained by our reliability.”