Toro Rosso disappointed after qualifying

Both Toro Rosso drivers’ of Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne are openly disappointed with their qualifying efforts for Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix, with Frenchman Vergne being eliminated after Q1 with the likes of Caterham, Marussia and HRT.

With all hope for a decent qualifying position resting on the shoulders of Daniel Ricciardo for the Italian outfit, the Australian failed excel and only qualified a position ahead of Vergne in 17th. With the team trying a different approach regarding their set-up in China, thoughts within Toro Rosso is that maybe the changes could have altered the teams pace for the worse.

“Obviously, this was a disappointing qualifying for us and today we clearly lacked the pace we needed to be in the fight.” Explained Toro Rosso’s Chief Engineer, Laurent Mekies, “We now have to look at where we lost this performance. We made quite a few changes to the cars from yesterday and during this morning’s free practice and we must assess where we did not go in the right direction. So far this weekend, we explored a quite different direction in terms of set-up and maybe it cost something in terms of ultimate pace in qualifying.”

Daniel Ricciardo was expecting Toro Rosso to have the pace to qualify much higher for the Chinese Grand Prix, and was ultimately highly disappointed with the final result for the team.

“P17 is not going to put a smile on my face, as I had expected to do better today.” Said Daniel Ricciardo, “I drove as hard as I could, but that did not produce a good enough lap time. With the package we had, I don’t think I could have got much more out of it. Hopefully tomorrow will be better and then we must look at trying to improve our qualifying performance for the next race. This weekend, we had a few small updates but we also tried a few drastic measures in a way that required me to drive differently, so either we can make it work in Bahrain or we could go back to something we understand a bit better.”

With both Toro Rosso’s qualifying so far back on the grid, the two drivers’ are set for a difficult 56-lap race as they will inevitably become locked in a midfield battle with the likes of Williams, Force India and Felipe Massa. A points finish is unlikely for Vergne or Ricciardo, yet in 2012 anything seems possible in what is becoming a highly unpredictable season.

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