Jaime Alguersuari was the
best placed of the Toro Rosso drivers in today's
season-opening grand prix in Bahrain, he finished in
thirteenth position, three places ahead of team mate
Sebastien Buemi who was classified sixteenth although he
retired close to the end of the race. However the
Ferrari-powered Toro Rosso cars didn't show much pace during
the race and the Faenza, Italy-based team will have plenty
of work to do before round 2 looms into view.
Jaime Alguersuari
(STR5-03) Pos. 13th
"It was positive that I managed to finish the first race of
the season, also the first with the new no fuelling
regulations. There is still a lot of room to improve,
especially for me and also for the team as we should be in a
position to challenge for points, being somewhere around
seventh to eleventh in the races. We will need to work hard
to achieve that. In terms of my physical condition, I feel
that I am in much better shape than last year, when I had
very little time to train, so that most of my races were
just taxi drives. This track was not the best for us and now
we must analyse all the data and see how to improve. One
thing is certain, we need to qualify better."
Sebastien Buemi (STR5-01)
Pos. 16th
"I’m not sure what happened
at the start, but I got a lot of wheelspin, so I did not get
away well and everyone passed me. After that, the first lap
was quite hectic and I got a couple of places back. We
decided to stay on a one stop strategy and for a while it
was going well and I closed on De La Rosa, but those who
took on new tyres before me were faster and so they got past
me. By the time I pitted, I had lost too many places. After
changing tyres, I got stuck behind Jaime and was unable to
pass him and with three laps to go, the car just stopped.
Tough love!”
Franz Tost (Team Principal)
"This first race weekend did
not go the way we expected, because, based on the result of
our testing in February, we thought we would be closer to
the points. Buemi suffered a hydraulic problem on Friday and
hardly did any laps and was therefore unable to find the
best set-up and we paid heavily for this in qualifying. As
for the race, we have to analyse why Buemi had such a poor
start and now we have find out why his car stopped without
warning, with what we assume was an electrical problem. At
least Alguersuari finished the race, in thirteenth place, so
this is another circuit he can tick off his learning book.
We will now analyse the whole weekend in the hope of
returning to the pace and reliability we had in winter
testing and we are looking forward to fighting back in
Melbourne.”
