In a
week that Toro Rosso confirmed that Sebastien Buemi and
Jaime Alguersuari will be retained for next season the
pair were again unsplittable in the final qualifying
session, this time though it was the young the Spaniard
who got the advantage over his Swiss team mate and he
will line-up on row in sixteenth place on tomorrow's
grid at Hockenheim for the German Grand Prix.
It was a disappointing qualifying
session as the Toro Rosso followed on from its lack of
pace shown at the last round of the F1 World
Championship, the British Grand Prix, and the Italian
outfit brought up the rear of the "established" teams,
beating only Lotus, Virgin and HRT on the timesheets apart from Tonio
Liuzzi in the Force India-Mercedes who crashed out of
the action early in Q1. Alguersuari's best lap was a 1:15.588 which was one
place and four-tenths of a second better than Buemi
managed and will open out row nine.
Jaime Alguersuari: “To
be honest I did not expect to be quicker than my
team-mate today, as it has been a difficult weekend with
not so much testing on a dry track. Therefore, I found
it hard to get up to speed in the dry, but in the end, I
managed it in qualifying, even if I might have been able
to improve by one or two tenths. If it stays like this
for the race, who knows what might happen as it is
possible that tyre degradation will be a factor that
might help me move up the order.”
Sebastien Buemi:
“Q1 went well, but I am not really
sure what happened in Q2, as I was unable to make the
most of the improving track conditions. We will have to
see why that was, if it was down to the way we ran the
tyres or some other reason to do with the setup.
Therefore I am rather disappointed that things did not
go as well as expected. As for tomorrow’s race, there
are a couple of places where you can overtake if you
have the speed, so let’s wait and see what happens and a
lot could depend on the weather. If it is dry, the key
element of the strategy will be managing the usage of
the soft tyre.”
Giorgio Ascanelli (Technical
Director): “After this
afternoon’s session, we are looking a bit better than in
Silverstone a fortnight ago, however that is mainly due
to Liuzzi’s crash – I’m glad he seems okay – rather than
due to our own efforts. “
Jaime Alguersuari (STR5-03)
