In Brazil yesterday
Scuderia Toro Rosso gave up the fight for seventh place
in the constructors championship after a second
consecutive zero points score meant it narrowly missed
out in the final standings to the similarly
Ferrari-powered Sauber team.
A haul of twelve points
from the Korean and Indian grands prix had hauled
Scuderia Toro
Rosso onto 41 points and level-pegging with Sauber. However a no
points showing in the penultimate race in Abu Dhabi
followed by both cars finishing outside the top ten at
Interlagos yesterday (Jaime Alguersuari was 11th at the
chequered flag and
Sebastien Buemi 12th) meant that the Faenza-based team
finished the year in eighth place with 41 points, while Sauber, which collected two points in Brazil to add to
the one it picked up in Abu Dhabi, finishes in seventh
place. It meant that Sauber also came out on top in the
battle of the customer Ferrari teams.
Toro Rosso was however
well clear in the final constructors' standings of the
ninth placed team, Williams, which managed to pick up
just 5 points all season. It also beat Team Lotus,
Marussia Virgin and HRT which all failed to score any
points for a second consecutive year.
The small Italian team has
suffered from inconsistency all season, making steps
forward and then going backwards. However the STR6
single-seater seems to be a solid car capable of
consistently finishing in the points. The team however urgently needs
to employ a competitive driver capable of unlocking the
car's potential, delivering results and focus, to help to
move the team forward.
Jaime Alguersuari
(STR6-02) Pos. 11th
"This was a difficult race right from the start, with
low grip in the first stint on the softer tyre,
especially in terms of traction and at the exit to slow
corners and I was struggling a lot to follow Buemi and
Perez. The second stint on the harder tyre was much
better, but it’s hard to understand in general why we
seem to have lost performance in the last two races.
Overall, I am happy to finish the season on 26 points
whereas last year I had only five, so hopefully I can
continue this improvement by doing better next year."
Sebastien Buemi (STR6-03) Pos. 12th
"Of course, we were hoping to
score points today, but we were not competitive enough,
finishing 11th and 12th. I got a good start, passing
Jaime and Barrichello but after that I soon suffered
with tyre degradation partly because we did not have the
best set up for these conditions, but in terms of my own
performance I feel I did the best I could. I am
disappointed we could not get ahead of Sauber, but
that’s racing. Overall, the season has not been too bad
and I had some good races, but I lost points with
various mishaps and problems. The team has worked well
but we need to improve still further next year if we
want to do better than this."
Franz Tost (Team Principal)
"At the start of the season, we
set ourselves the target of finishing at least eighth in
the Constructors’ championship and that is where we have
finished, 36 points ahead of those in ninth place.
However, having come so close to challenging for seventh
place when we picked up a significant number of points
in Korea and India, we cannot be happy with missing out
on overtaking the team ahead of us, failing to score in
the last two races.
As for today’s race, Sebastien
got a good start, while Jaime dropped a couple of places
and then on the Soft tyre, we struggled to match the
pace of the Saubers who had got ahead of us at the start
and therefore Kobayashi pulled away a bit. Once back on
the Medium compound, Jaime was able to close the gap but
not enough to get past. As for Buemi, he did not have
the pace today, which was partly due to the fact we
opted to give him a set-up that would have been more
suited to a wet race. Work is already well underway on
our next year’s car and as from tomorrow, the entire
team’s focus switches to 2012."
