Formula 1 News

Toro Rosso: Impressive qualifying session for Sebastian Vettel 

Toro Rosso team took an interesting route heading into qualifying today for the Japanese Grand Prix. They opted to send out Sebastian Vettel on a full wet setup and Tonio Liuzzi on a dry setup. In qualifying at least, this made for quite a difference.

In Q1 Vettel was an impressive seventh fastest with Liuzzi 16th, while in Q2, Vettel was tenth best while Liuzzi had to be satisfied with 14th on the grid. The team had made it into Q3 for the first time and Vettel was able to qualify eighth following the demotion of Nico Rosberg. The rookie driver will certainly be hoping for more rain on Sunday.

Sebastian Vettel: “Definitely a good day and a great experience for the team to get to Q3 for the first time. Fantastic! It was difficult not having any free practice this morning and it was the first time for me driving this car in the rain this afternoon. It feels good and I looking forward to tomorrow now. I think if I had managed that final run, I could have improved by up to two places but we went for a last minute strategy change which meant I lost the last lap. When you start high up the grid you expect a better than usual finish position. Hopefully there will be some more rain which would help us and then we will see how far we can go.”

Vitantonio Liuzzi: “This result is okay. We took a gamble in terms of set-up strategy and I set off with quite low wing, as if for dry conditions, while we put Sebastian on wet settings. We knew it would be difficult in the wet, but we are hoping for a dry race tomorrow for which we now have the right settings. Overall it was a good qualifying as I don’t think I could have got more out of my car. More rear wing definitely helped Sebastian make it to Q3. But I am really positive about tomorrow if it is dry, so the real situation for me could be better than it seems.”

Giorgio Ascanelli: “One car was set up for the wet and one for the dry, so the one set up for the wet is P9 and the other is P15! Probably we could have made it to P8, but we just missed the flag at the end of the session which was a shame. But both drivers performed well. In some ways, being in Q3 could actually give us a more difficult race. But let us wait and see as the outcome will depend partly on the weather.”