Both Toro Rosso pilots did make it through the first qualifying knock out stage and into the Q2 session but then progressed no further, eventually collecting the fifteenth and sixteenth fastest times to be set in Q2, the Swiss driver narrowly getting the better of his younger Spanish team mate, the margin being just a tenth of a second, although the team from Faenza in Italy did get the edge on the two similarly Ferrari-engined BMW Sauber cars which will line up behind them in seventeenth and eighteenth places on the grid. The rest of the runners in the field behind the Toro Rosso cars comprise of Lotus, Virgin and HRT teams.

Sebastien Buemi

“Fifteenth is about the most I could do, so I am reasonably satisfied, although it was so close that a couple of tenths might have made a difference to the position, but the same thing applies to everyone and I think my lap was pretty good. The track improved an incredible amount today giving a lot more grip than on Friday, so you could accelerate and brake much harder this afternoon. It would be nice to get into the lower end of the points positions in the race, which would involve passing a few cars, but our long runs in free practice were pretty good and here you often get incidents and Safety Cars which mix up the order, so let’s wait and see. The team did a good job improving the car from yesterday.”

“With the lack of grip from the track and the low temperatures it was hard for me to get the tyres to work at their best, but I can be happy with this afternoon’s performance, just half a tenth behind my teammate. I think that, because of last night’s rain the track condition did not improve as much as we would have liked. As for tomorrow, anything can happen as Canada often produces a crazy race. We just need to stay on the track and see what develops!”

Giorgio Ascanelli (Technical Director)

“I am happy to still be one step ahead of my pre-season prediction for where we would be in the order and our mini-battle with Sauber is swinging one way then the other. It seems that so far this weekend we have the upper hand. I suspect our technical package might be a little bit inferior to them at the moment, but today our drivers did a better job. I am more than happy with the work the team here, in the factory and the wind tunnel has done. It was a major effort for us to come here with a few new components: some of them are a factor of the specific nature of this track and others are down to the development programme, one element of which did not work, thus costing us some time yesterday. Overall, we look a bit better than in Turkey and I hope our race pace will be stronger, with the same level of reliability we have seen so far. Strategically this race will probably not be the standard one stop and Safety Cars could play a big role. Tyre performance will be critical as the new track surface is making things difficult. Earlier this year the teams requested that Bridgestone produce a rear tyre with more degradation to make the racing more exciting and I expect we will see just that tomorrow, which might shuffle the pack a bit more than usual.”