James Key: “We recovered reasonably well“

Published on 30 April 2016 by Johan Peeters

James Key, Technical Director of Scuderia Toro Rosso, says after qualifying on Saturday in Russia: “I think this morning we recovered reasonably well with car balance on both cars compared to yesterday, particularly on Max’s, where we were able to build in some stability with changes overnight. As a result, this morning’s practice was a lot more competitive. We knew that today’s qualifying was going to be very tight, with a big bunch of teams very close together behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Williams. We were confident that reaching Q3 was possible with both cars, but we knew it had to be a very well-executed quali to make sure it worked. Sadly for Carlos, he didn’t quite get through as Kvyat just got ahead at the end of Q2, which pushed him down to P11. So unfortunately he starts in eleventh position, but at least has the advantage of new tyres.”

“Max did a good job to get through to Q3, even though we underperformed in the final part of the session and we now need to understand what happened. I think tomorrow is going to be very interesting. This is a tricky track. Tyres are performing to a certain extent as expected, but it’s going to be tight on strategy and tyre management. We know you can overtake here, even though it’s difficult, so it’s going to be interesting to see exactly how the race works out. Our race pace will be better than our quali pace, which is typically the case, so now we need to look at the positions we are in and how we can progress: that’s our plan for tonight.”