Jul 10, 2011
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The British Grand Prix marks the halfway point of the season and Scuderia Toro Rosso ended it in good form, securing yet another point courtesy of a tenth place finish from Jaime Alguersuari.
Our Spaniard has therefore scored at the last three races and, including Buemi’s performances, we have finished in the points seven times in these first nine races. Unfortunately, today at Silverstone, our Swiss driver’s afternoon came to a premature end after 25 laps, when he was hit by the Force India of Paul di Resta. The incident did enough damage to the STR6 that Sébastien had to park it at the side of the track. We move a further one point ahead of Force India, maintaining our seventh place in the Constructors’ championship, although with Sergio Perez coming home seventh, Sauber slightly increases the gap ahead of us.
Both Toro Rosso drivers made good starts, running like the rest of the field on intermediate rain tyres as the track was still damp and after the first run of pit stops to switch to slicks, Jaime was in fourteenth place, one ahead of his team-mate. The Spaniard then got stuck into a fascinating fight as he tried to pass Heidfeld in the Renault, although on lap 19, he had to watch his mirrors for Maldonaldo, the Williams man recovering from a bad start. Before Buemi came in for his second tyre stop, he was running thirteenth, one place behind Alguersuari. But then came the incident with Di Resta and we were down to one car. By lap 28, Jaime was up to tenth, although Schumacher, coming back from a nose change and a stop-go penalty got his Mercedes ahead on lap 33, although with other retirements ahead, Jaime finally regained the tenth place on lap 41 and kept it for a further eleven when it was time to hang out the chequered flag.
Clearly, if we can score points even when starting from lowly grid positions, it begs the question, what could we do if we started from further up the grid? This is a something our designers and engineers have naturally been looking at and are working on for the future. In the short term, we now head for Nurburgring and the German Grand Prix. Because this event alternates behind the track in the Eiffel mountains and Hockenheim, it will be the first time that Alguersuari has raced a Formula 1 car at this venue. Let’s hope it marks the start of a successful second half of this very exciting season.
The 52-lap race produced plenty of thrilling action, from start to finish and resulted in Ferrari’s first win of the season, courtesy of Fernando Alonso. It was only the third time this year that a Grand Prix has been won by someone other than Sebastian Vettel. The Red Bull man finished second today, having to fend off a massive attack from his team-mate Mark Webber in the closing stages. Lewis Hamilton drove a typically gritty race, coming from tenth on the grid to fourth, but his efforts meant he was running low on fuel in the closing stages and almost had to give best to Felipe Massa, the Brazilian nearly crashing off the track at the final corner in his efforts to secure fourth, but in the end he had to settle for fifth. The rest of the points, ahead of Alguersuari went to sixth placed Nico Rosberg, followed by Sergio Perez, Nick Heidfeld and Michael Schumacher in ninth.
Credit: Toro Rosso (www.scuderiatororosso.com)
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