Bahrain Grand Prix - Qualifying‏ - TORO ROSSO

Carlos Sainz (STR10-04, Car 55)Third Practice Session - Best lap: 1:36.979, pos. 17th, 14 lapsQualifying - Best lap: (Q1) 1:35.371, (Q2) 1:34.641, (Q3) 1:34.462, pos. 9th“I feel very happy! Probably it was the less expected Q3 of the year, I even thought this was going to be the toughest and most difficult to achieve after what we had seen in FP3… But we did a mega turnaround and we went for it. Everything worked out and I’m very satisfied with the result. For tomorrow’s race, our race pace should be the same or even better than our qualifying pace, so it gives me quite a good feeling for tomorrow. We have a balanced car that’s good through the high-speed corners and gentle on the tyres, but if we get into battles it can become a bit tricky. We will have to find a compromise, but I’m really looking forward to my fourth race in Formula 1.”Max Verstappen (STR10-03, Car 33)Third Practice Session - Best lap: 1:36.684, pos. 14th, 11 lapsQualifying - Best lap: (Q1) 1:35.611, (Q2) 1:35.103, pos. 15th“It wasn’t the best qualifying. I suffered from a bit too much understeer on the car and that’s never great for a qualifying lap on new tyres, but hopefully this will help to save the rear tyres more in the race tomorrow. We’ll do our best to do a good start and make the most of the fact that we have one more set of Soft tyres available!”James Key (Technical Director)“We’ve had a fair amount of problems to resolve this weekend. Yesterday was a real mixed bag of being happy and unhappy with where we were, so we had to work hard overnight. In FP3 we were not entirely satisfied, although we knew there was a lot more potential to find. We believed that Q3 was always on the cards, preferably with both drivers, so we worked towards that and with the changes we made in FP3 we finally got a balance on the car that both Carlos and Max were happier with. They progressed as hoped until we got to Q2, where unfortunately Max didn’t quite pull his lap together, so we need to analyse that and see what we can do better for him. Carlos did what he needed to do and got into Q3, which was great, as it was a very tight fight. To start P9 is a decent result and, given the problems we’ve had, it was a great turnaround from Carlos. Tomorrow we will try and recover from our unfortunate lack of points in the last race.”


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