Scuderia Toro Rosso has achieved its best qualifying result this season with both Brendon Hartley and Pierre Gasly getting through to the third qualifying round, making the top ten on the grid. Hartley will start eighth while Gasly will start sixth after a qualifying session that saw the affects of both dry and wet conditions.
“The conditions were really tricky out there, but I’m incredibly happy to make it into Q3 for the first time,” commented Hartley! “I had a couple of little mistakes at the end of Q3 when I started pushing the limits and I fell just short of Pierre’s time, which put us in P8.
“The whole way through Qualifying the team did a brilliant job with communication and strategy and the car felt good. I think we’re always hanging around the top 10, and to get both cars through today is a really big achievement. It’s quite hard to pass here so I need to have the best possible start and a good first lap. There might be some strategy in play as it’s a little bit of follow the leader around here, so hopefully we can hang on to a points position tomorrow.”
“It was a crazy qualifying for us, especially in these conditions but I’m super happy with the outcome,” said Gasly! “It was very tricky to keep the car on track, but the team made a fantastic strategy with the tyres and I managed to put a good lap in. It was super difficult but I really enjoyed it!
“When I saw the rain coming before Qualifying I thought there could be an opportunity, and the result of P6 is just incredible, especially after the tough few weekends we’ve had, it’s really an unbelievable result for the team. To get both cars into Q3 was a great job and it’s a mega day for Toro Rosso. It’s really important to have a good Qualifying here as it is hard to overtake and in the race we’ll give the others around us a hard time! I think we have good pace so we need to stay focussed and prepare well for tomorrow.”
“It has been a fantastic afternoon for the whole team, and I want to thank everyone here and in the factories in Faenza, Bicester, Milton Keynes and Sakura for all their support in making this result possible,” said Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer). “Coming to this race, we knew the qualifying session here in Hungary would offer potential for a good result with the characteristics of our car, but we didn’t imagine we would be lining up in P6 and P8 on Sunday!
“During FP3, we continued working on optimising the dry qualifying balance and we came out of the session very happy with where we were. Even if we didn’t get the cleanest laps we were still competitive, so we were confident heading into a dry Qualifying we would get at least one car into Q3. However, just before the session, the heavens opened, which at the time we were quite disappointed about as we were hoping for a smooth session with good performance.
“However, in the end it actually worked in our favour and the whole team did an amazing job – the communication was clear and concise, we made the correct decisions on tyres and we all worked extremely well together. It’s really in tricky days like today where teamwork and communication make all of the difference. Both our drivers have little experience in Formula 1 in these conditions but they were able to extract the maximum from the car.
“In Q3 there was only one lap that was going to count: the last one. And both drivers gave it their all. We held the cars in the pit stops with the aim of crossing the line right at the end of the session and this worked well too. It was extremely busy in the garage with multiple sets of Wets, Inters and Dry tyres for both cars but the mechanics did a fantastic job to carry out the stops faultlessly.
“Thanks to them for their great work! Looking ahead to tomorrow, our forecast is predicting dry weather and our long run pace on Friday was fairly competitive. The track will reset with this rain but we are still expecting hot conditions so it’s going to make for an interesting race and our aim is to score good points.”
Qualifying results
1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1m35.658s –
2 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 1m35.918s 0.260s
3 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1m36.186s 0.528s
4 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1m36.210s 0.552s
5 Carlos Sainz Renault 1m36.743s 1.085s
6 Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso/Honda 1m37.591s 1.933s
7 Max Verstappen Red Bull/Renault 1m38.032s 2.374s
8 Brendon Hartley Toro Rosso/Honda 1m38.128s 2.470s
9 Kevin Magnussen Haas/Ferrari 1m39.858s 4.200s
10 Romain Grosjean Haas/Ferrari 1m40.593s 4.935s
11 Fernando Alonso McLaren/Renault 1m35.214s –
12 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull/Renault 1m36.442s –
13 Nico Hulkenberg Renault 1m36.506s –
14 Marcus Ericsson Sauber/Ferrari 1m37.075s –
15 Lance Stroll Williams/Mercedes – –
16 Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren/Renault 1m18.782s –
17 Charles Leclerc Sauber/Ferrari 1m18.817s –
18 Esteban Ocon Force India/Mercedes 1m19.142s –
19 Sergio Perez Force India/Mercedes 1m19.200s –
20 Sergey Sirotkin Williams/Mercedes 1m19.301s –
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