GP Abu Dhabi, Daniil Kvyat: “Today's result is the maximum achievable”

These were highly disappointing qualifications for the Toro Rosso, which for the first time this year did not take any car beyond Q1, however the result was predictable given that the Faenza team had a problem with the construction of the brake baskets. Due to their shape, the latter punctured the tyres. This inconvenience forced the Italian team to completely miss free practice on Friday.

Daniil Kvyat – 17th: “After all the problems we had this weekend, today's result is the best that can be achieved, at least as far as I'm concerned. To be honest I don't think I could have had a better ride. We had little time to take advantage of free practice, so it was difficult to do qualifying considering the few laps done... I'm happy with the recovery we made and we still have a small chance to fight tomorrow, where I'll try to do a clean race, after which we'll see where we close. In the race we will be a bit blind as we haven't completed any long runs, but we will certainly fight until the end.”

Carlo Sainz – 21st: “Honestly it's been a very tough two days here in Abu Dhabi, and it's a bit bad as I wanted to end the season with a clean weekend. The team struggled a lot to resolve the problem with the rear of the car and unfortunately we weren't able to do many laps during free practice. We worked hard to make the changes to the car and the team did a great job. Naturally these events affected our setup as there wasn't much time to develop it, furthermore we spent little time on the track and this is not ideal when preparing for a race. Tomorrow we'll start from the back of the grid but let's see what we can do – I'll try to work my way up and have fun, hopefully there won't be any reliability problems. I can't wait to fight!”

Jody Egginton (Head of Vehicle Performance): “After yesterday's problems, the team and the Faenza factory worked all night to find a solution, this allowed us to do some laps in FP3 and be ready for qualifying. Clearly, the lack of laps limited the drivers both in terms of setup and confidence with the car during this event. Unfortunately this did not allow our cars to go beyond Q1. It was disappointing, as in normal circumstances, the team, drivers and car are capable of achieving so much more. The qualifying itself was not complicated, but given the lack of performance due to the few laps of the drivers we decided to try three runs. This was done to allow drivers to have opportunities with a package that is not fully optimized. Despite the lack of laps, the drivers were great and got the most out of the car. Now we focus on the race where we will try to seize any opportunities to improve our position... we have nothing to lose!"

Stefano Rifici (@SedyBenoitPeace)