Traffic to blame for Q1 exit - Kvyat

The Russian was the fifth driver to get eliminated in Australian Grand Prix's Q1 today and will start from 18th for Sunday's race.

While it was suspected that Red Bull may have faced a technical problem that brought upon the Russian's early exit, Kvyat revealed that it was, actually, the format change which caught the team by surprise.

"It is just that the new Q1 format caught our side of the garage by surprise," said Kvyat after qualifying.

"Now [after the session] it is easier to speculate but we will try to do our best tomorrow."

He also confirmed that the radio clampdown did not play a part in his Q1 woes. "It didn't change anything.

"Everything from the start was wrong, we just went in the middle of traffic and I think when you do these things, it doesn’t help you and the second lap, it was clean but it wasn’t good enough."

Tyre changes interesting

While Kvyat is still against the changes to qualifying, the Russian noted he was in favour of the new tyre allocation rules, suggesting they could bring additional excitement to the races.

"I think the new tyre [rule] changes are interesting, it is always better to have softer tyres for qualifying especially so that we can go a bit faster in the corners," he said.

"It shows a bit more potential of the cars, of the speed of F1, it is good - but let’s see tomorrow in the race, probably it will give a better answer.

"Let's see what everyone will go for [in the race] and maybe there will be two different sides of this tyre selection and then it can bring some excitement in the race, hopefully."

Additional reporting by Andrew van Leeuwen