By Andrew Cutler
September 8 2012

After pouring over the data gathered on Friday, the engineers at Scuderia Toro Rosso were able to give their drivers a set-up on the STR7 that made for a well balanced and slightly faster car, but did essentially nothing in terms of vaulting them further up the starting grid.

While both Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne were able to advance out of the Q1 session, they could mount no serious challenge to break into Q3, and had to settle for 15th (Ricciardo - 1:25.312) and 17th (Vergne - 1:25.441), respectively.

Both will advance one spot on the starting grid as Williams driver Pastor Maldonado (qualified 12th - 1:24.820) is demoted ten positions as a penalty for incidents that occured in last week's Belgian GP.

Here are the team's post qualifying comments:

Daniel Ricciardo (15th): 

"This was a so-so qualifying. When you are fifteenth, you always think you could do a bit better. However, realistically, I don’t think we could have got to Q3 today, so we have to settle for this as Senna is around three tenths in front and even putting my best sector times together, I don’t believe it would have been good enough to match that. It’s some consolation not being right at the back of the Q2 section and now there’s the race to look forward to. It’s not been a bad day and with the set-up we have chosen I think we could be in a strong position to overtake other cars tomorrow. With a good race pace and two DRS zones, it should make for an interesting afternoon. The first corner here is always a bit of a lottery and from this part of the grid I might be able to profit from any delays to those at the front."

Jean-Eric Vergne (17th):

"Honestly, I have not felt comfortable in the car most of the weekend as we never really found the best set-up. Actually, qualifying was the best of all the sessions so far. On top of that, I am to blame for a small mistake on my quick lap which cost me about two tenths, after I went over a bump just as I was changing gear. On the plus side, we have made a good step forward with the car since yesterday, which maybe does not show in the times as they are all so close."

Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer:

"After analysing all the data last night and making changes to the car, in absolute terms, we made a step forward today. On Friday we were not happy with car balance and made progress in that area, so that both Daniel and Jev were a bit happier with the car today. Although the performance did improve, it was not enough to get further up the order than fifteenth place, in what was a very evenly matched session. We did our homework regarding race preparation on Friday, so hopefully we can pick up a bit more pace tomorrow and combined with the fact the STR7 seems to show good top speed, that should allow us to enjoy some good battle out on track."