A positive result for Kvyat in Azerbaijan

Daniil Kvyat (STR11-03, Car 26)

Third Practice Session - Best lap: 1:45.981, pos. 9th, 19 laps
Qualifying - Best lap: (Q1) 1:44.694, (Q2) 1:44.687, (Q3) 1:44.717 pos. 7th

“It was a good day, I’m quite happy! We managed to get some clean laps, something which isn’t easy to do here in Baku and a trouble-free qualifying session is definitely what I needed. It was tricky out there as the track was changing all the time and you had to go in line with the evolution, but we managed it well and did a good job. We will now try and do the same tomorrow – there will definitely be plenty of opportunities and we will have to be very alive and make sure we take them. I have to say I enjoyed today’s Quali quite a lot. I’ve been feeling more and more confident with the car and to start tomorrow’s race from P7 is a positive result.”

Carlos Sainz (STR11-01, Car 55)

Third Practice Session - Best lap: 1:46.190, pos. 12th, 17 laps
Qualifying - Best lap: (Q1) 1:44.827, (Q2) 1:45.000, pos. 13th

“A bit of a disappointing day for me – it’s a shame, because we had a decent Friday and I was feeling good. We had new brakes on the car today and unfortunately I wasn’t feeling as confident as yesterday under braking. Maybe this could be a reason why in qualifying I just didn’t manage to extract the most out of the car… and if you also add the fact that there was a lot of traffic, in the end it wasn’t possible to get into Q3. Let’s see what we are capable of doing tomorrow, hopefully we can do another good comeback – it can be a very crazy race here, so I’m convinced that with a clever strategy and quick pit-stops we can manage it! All in all, we need to stay optimistic because tomorrow can certainly be a better day.”

Jody Egginton (Head of Vehicle Performance)

“We made a number of changes to the cars overnight to address some of the balance issues from Friday. The drivers have made good use of the car today, to progress through what was a tricky qualifying in terms of traffic and yellow flags. We elected to go for a longer first run with both drivers in Q1 to provide a good ‘heads up’ ahead of a shorter run. Carlos and Daniil made good use of the second tyre set to progress to Q2. The first run for both drivers in Q2 were traffic effected, with some competitors running a build-lap before their push-lap and unfortunately Carlos was unable to improve with his second run also due to traffic.

However, Daniil got his lap in and progressed to Q3 without too many problems. With the red flag in Q3 coming with Daniil on track, we were forced to bring him back and prepare for the restart. With so many cars following each other in a train on the out lap, tyre preparation was not ideal and therefore we were not able to improve. Once this said, we are not unhappy with our starting position and we are ready to switch our focus to the race.”

Scuderia Toro Rosso