Scuderia Toro Rosso
A Scrapbook Memory - And Another Point
By Andrew Cutler
October 8 2012
If Scuderia Toro Rosso still hasn't been able to mount a serious challenge to Williams for eighth place overall in the WCC, at least they seem to be consistantly picking up championship points here in the back half of the 2012 F1 season. For the second consecutive GP - and the third time in the last four - Daniel Ricciardo finished in a points-paying position; in this case, tenth.
He did so after running a strong race, which was capped by a persistant challenge from Michael Schumacher in the closing laps.
Teammate Jean-Eric Vergne would not fair quite as well, running out of the points all day except for when others were cycling through their tire/pit strategies: The Frenchman would finish the GP in 13th.
Here are the team's post race comments:
Daniel Ricciardo (10th):
It was an eventful race. Immediately at the start, I got bogged down a little bit, but then going up through the gears I found more drive, but I’d lost a position to Hulkenberg. Then, with the incident that later brought out the Safety Car, I managed to make up some places. I saw Alonso spin off in front of me and it was a close call, as quite a few of us were close to getting caught up in the accident. I managed to get around it and got past Grosjean going into Turn 3. From then on, I had a pretty good race, staying with Maldonado at first, but could not pass him. The last two stints were good, at first having a battle with Webber who was on a different strategy. Then right at the end, I was holding off Michael and I was really pleased to have won that battle. It’s always tougher when you are the slower car in a duel, but with good advice from the pit wall on how to use the KERS to defend in the DRS zone, I managed it. Our work rate as a team has improved and I’m very pleased with the way I drove under pressure. It’s not every day you have a seven times world champion on your tail and given he only has a few more races, it was nice to have a battle with him to put in my scrapbook!”
Jean-Eric Vergne (13th):
“I made a good start, but in general, it could have been a better race for me, as I lost a lot of time behind Kovalainen in the first stint, as he was on the Option and had better traction out of the corners than I did. Also, at the second corner, I came across Rosberg going backwards in front of me and I had to brake, which meant everyone went past me. After that, I just pushed as hard as I could, showing what the car could do, running a strong pace. Losing three places on the grid with a penalty did not help, but yet again we showed we can be strong on Sunday, as we were faster than the Force Indias and Senna. Now I only have to wait a few days to try again in Korea, where I first drove on Friday morning for Toro Rosso last year. In general, this has been an enjoyable weekend and I’m already looking forward to racing here again next year.”
Franz Tost, Team Principal:
“We have now scored points in three of the last four races, which is very encouraging and is down to the efforts of everyone here at the track and back at the factory. Once again, we saw that our race pace allowed us to challenge for the points positions even from far back on the grid, therefore if we can improve our performance on Saturday afternoon, we can aspire to do better.”
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Well done Daniel! "and qualifying was half a second faster than JEV!"
daniel likes suzuka and it showed.
regards tt
) this time. Hopefully, from here on out he will avoid ever doing it again.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2012:10:09:14:39:23 by IndyAndy.
