Toro Rosso, Verstappen: “A great result for the whole team”

A fifth position which bodes well for tomorrow's race: Max Verstappen can certainly end this qualifying at Albert Park with a smile on his face. The first qualifying of the new Ferrari-powered Toro Rosso certainly surprised all fans linked to the world of Formula One, given that the Dutchman managed to achieve an excellent fifth place. The same goes for Carlos Sainz, who set the seventh fastest time, just a few thousandths behind the riders ahead of him. The Scuderia Faenza therefore has a great opportunity and tomorrow's objective will certainly be to start the season with a good amount of points.

Here are the words of Max Verstappen: “It was a good qualifying, especially after I struggled a bit with the car in FP3. We managed to sort everything out and then get fifth place here in Melbourne: as well as being my best career placing, it's a great result for the whole team! To be honest, I'm a bit surprised: I thought Q3 was a possible target, but fifth place is something more than we expected. I think this new qualifying system is quite challenging, because you only have one real attempt, but I liked it. Over the winter the team did an excellent job: now let's enjoy the moment and prepare for tomorrow's race: I can't wait!”.

Here are Carlos Sainz's impressions:“We can be satisfied with our first qualifying of the season: fifth and seventh position, here in Australia, represent an excellent result for the team! Even though I wasn't able to repeat a lap as fast as the one I did in Q3 in Q2, I'm happy with seventh position: tomorrow will be a good starting point for the race. The car seems to be going really well and the hard work we have put in over the winter is starting to pay off. This was a rather hectic and complicated session for us, but we hope that the fans appreciated the new format. We have a good pace and our objective for tomorrow will be to fight to score as many points as possible. We have to aim to stay in the top seven: I can't wait to start this challenge, it will be a fun race."

Roberto Valenti