Race - Belgian GP report: Toro Rosso Ferrari

Carlos Sainz

“I think we tried everything we could today to make it into the points, but when you just don’t have the pace, it’s impossible. We had decided to go for a one-stop strategy and at one point it looked possible, but in the end I was losing too much time so we had to pit for a second time… Not the ideal race, but all I can say is that we extracted the maximum out of the car today and in the end a P15 was the most we could achieve. Here the car behaved better than last week in Spa, so this is something positive for us – the last three races have been very tricky, racing at very power-dependent circuits, and this has made it very difficult to fight… Hopefully in Singapore this situation changes a bit and we can get back to where we deserve to be.”

Daniil Kvyat

“Not the race we wanted. We had an issue with the floor, which got damaged after Turn 1, as I was sandwiched by a few cars, and we therefore lost a lot of downforce… A part from this, the battery was also constantly overheating, so we decided to retire the car. We knew it was going to be difficult here, but it’s a shame to have to end my race early… We just need to be patient and hopefully the next tracks will suit us better.”

Franz Tost (Team Principal)

“As we could expect after yesterday’s qualifying, we had a difficult race… Nothing happened in front of us and, because of the fact that all the cars in front of us finished the race, we didn’t get the chance to score any points today. We called Daniil in as, in addition to a damaged floor, there was also a problem with the battery, which was overheating. There was absolutely no chance to score any points so we decided to retire him to save mileage on the engine. Regarding Carlos, he drove in the best possible way under these conditions and finished in P15. After Spa and Monza, we now look forward to Singapore, where we hope to finish within the points again.”