Race - Mexico GP report: Toro Rosso Ferrari

Carlos Sainz

“It just wasn’t our day today… What a tough afternoon! During the laps to the grid I already felt that there was something wrong with the gearbox while downshifting, as well as with the brakes that kept overheating from the first lap onwards – we didn’t have the pace today and these issues didn’t help. If to all this you also add a 5-second penalty for impeding Fernando during Lap 1… It just became a very difficult race from the very start and it meant we were never going to finish in the points unfortunately. It’s a shame, because we had a very good day yesterday, but this is racing and finishes like last Sunday in Austin don’t happen every day!”

Daniil Kvyat

“I’m quite happy with my race today, even if we finished P18 – I enjoyed a few very nice battles, did a couple of overtakes and had some fun. If I say the truth, I’d say that our pace today was just too slow to fight for higher positions, unfortunately. Regarding the 5-second penalty I was given, I have to say that there’s just no consistency with these penalties… I disagree with mine, even though I will review the race and maybe then I change my opinion. We now have two more races left and we will try and do our best, you never know what can happen.”

Franz Tost (Team Principal)

“This is not a result we expected, as Carlos was starting from P10, but during the race we simply had poor pace and we were therefore not in a position to fight for points. Carlos lost some performance in the second corner when he touched Massa and lost his front-wing end plate. From that point onwards he had less downforce, which also had a negative impact regarding the performance of the car. Later on, he got a penalty because of an incident with Alonso and this is the reason why we decided not to pit him again, because the end result wouldn’t have improved if we had. Regarding Daniil, his first stint wasn’t bad. He ended up getting stuck behind Nasr and couldn’t overtake him, so we decided to pit him for a second set of soft tyres. From that point onwards he drove a strong and competitive race. For his final stint, we went for a bit of a gamble with the supersofts just in case there was a last-minute Safety Car, but it didn’t happen in the end. We now look forward to the Brazilian GP that takes place in two weeks’ time.”