After picking up 12
points from the last two races it was back to a zero
score for Scuderia Toro Rosso in Abu Dhabi last night as
the Italian team struggled to be competitive on this
track right from the start of the practice sessions.
Toro Rosso had been
left with needing a bigger race effort after an average
qualifying session had seen both cars eliminated in Q2:
Buemi lined up 13th on the grid and Alguersuari in 15th.
Both had made early race progress towards the points
paying positions but suffered losses of time during the
race and collected no points.
With the Sauber-Ferrari
team picking up one point from the weekend for 10th
place, the Swiss team moved a point ahead of Toro Rosso
in the nail biting fight for seventh place in the
constructors' championship: Sauber now has 42 points to
Toro Rosso's 41 points with just one round remaining to
be contested, in Brazil in a fortnight's time.
However the famous
Brazilian circuit should better suit the Ferrari
V8-powered Toro Rosso single-seater than Abu Dhabi and
the little Faenza-based team seems to have built a
decent car this year which is more than capable of
fighting for the final points positions, it is more a
pity for grand prix fans that the team doesn't choose to
employ a decent driver to find and unlock the true
potential of the STR6.
Jaime Alguersuari
(STR6-02) Pos. 15th
"I am very disappointed with the outcome of this
weekend, because we had opted for a strategy in terms of
aerodynamics that appeared to be the best in terms of
ease of overtaking in the race. However, after the first
four or five laps, I seemed to pick up some tyre
degradation and I was losing the rear end. Then came the
key moment in my race, when there was a mistake in the
pit stop, which cost me a lot of time and dropped me
down the order, from which I could not recover. Today,
P10 was possible, because I had a good pace on the new
Options, even if I am not sure that we could have caught
the Force Indias. I am sure Brazil will suit us better,
so I am looking forward to that and the chance for all
of us to do a better job."
Sebastien Buemi (STR6-03) Retired
"I had to retire because of a loss of fluid from the
hydraulic system, which I first felt through the lack of
power steering, as this is what makes the most demand on
the hydraulics. After that, I could not change gear so
there was nothing to do but bring the car into the pits
and retire. It is such a shame, because I was having a
good race up to that point. Just before it happened, I
had passed Di Resta in the Force India and was hoping to
start fighting Schumacher and Sutil, which means that a
finish somewhere between seventh and ninth should have
been possible tonight. Now we have just one more
opportunity to try and score some more points, so I
can’t wait to get to Brazil to try and end the season
with a good result."
Franz Tost (Team Principal)
"This was a night of missed opportunities. As we had
expected, we were not as competitive in qualifying here
as we had been in India, but felt we would show better
in the race. In the early stages, this proved to be the
case, with Sebastien running as high as seventh at one
point. However, he had to bring the car into the pits
and retire with an hydraulic failure caused by a leak
from the system. Jaime was running a couple of places
behind his team-mate, but there was a mistake at his
first pit stop, which cost him a lot of time and
therefore he dropped down the order. From then on, he
drove well, putting in some competitive lap times, but
the points positions were no longer within his sights.
With Sauber scoring one point today, our battle with
them for seventh in the championship must now go down to
the wire in Brazil at a track that should suit our car
characteristics better than this one."
