Aug 27, 2011
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“This is the sort of day when a young driver can make a name for himself and today, you made a name for yourself. Sixth place on the grid is really outstanding.” Why should we praise Jaime Alguersuari ourselves when we can rely on this eloquent introduction from a British TV commentator, interviewing our Spanish driver a few minutes after he recorded the best-ever qualifying position of his Formula 1 career? Completing an excellent afternoon’s work for Scuderia Toro Rosso, Sébastien Buemi will start the Belgian Grand Prix from the sixth row in eleventh place.
Before you point it out, we will admit that Michael Schumacher’s early exit in Q1 gained us a place and then incidents for both Force India drivers removed two other drivers from the Q3 equation, but in this afternoon’s extremely tricky and changing conditions from wet to damp to dry, you had to make sure you were still on the race track before thinking about setting a quick time and both our boys did just that.
The drivers certainly showed no signs of having forgotten how to drive during their summer holiday and on the technical front, all the work carried out prior to the compulsory factory and wind tunnel shutdown seems to have delivered an encouraging step forward in performance terms. Aerodynamic changes that were adopted in Belgium for the first time were partly aimed at increasing the effectiveness of our DRS system and initial signs are positive. Before we get too carried away with this great Spa Saturday afternoon, we have to remember the points only get dished out on Sunday. So plenty still to do, working on strategy and ensuring all is well with the two STR6 cars, before the parc ferme conditions are applied this evening. The forecast is for a dry race and it will be interesting to see which of our drivers that will suit best, given they have different set-ups on their cars. A dry race is something of a step into the unknown for all the teams, as there has been hardly any dry running this weekend. The unknown factors naturally include the Pirelli tyres, as the level of degradation of the Medium and Soft tyres will be the key in terms of deciding how many pit stops are required. The situation is the same for everyone and given our excellent grid slots, both Jaime and Sébastien are hoping for a relative straightforward race in which to move up the order and bring home more championship points.
At the front of the grid, we find Sebastian Vettel securing his ninth pole of the year for Red Bull Racing, sharing the front row with Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren. Row 2 features Mark Webber, who it was announced today will stay with Red Bull next year and Felipe Massa in the Ferrari. Inside Jaime on row 3, we find Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes, while Sébastien has Kamui Kobayashi in the Sauber alongside him.
Credit: Toro Rosso (www.scuderiatororosso.com)
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