It was a tough qualifying for Scuderia Toro Rosso. The team was basically 'worst of the rest' today and will start tomorrow from P17 and P18. For Jaime Alguersuari it was the third time he didn't make it into Q2: "That was a difficult qualifying for me, not helped by the fact I was unable to drive in Free Practice 2 yesterday, which meant I was lacking data on the tyres, which is critical here because there is a big lap time difference between the Prime and the Option. On my first lap, which was always going to produce the best performance from the tyres, I got big traffic so could not do a good time."

"I tried again on the second lap," says Alguersuari. "I was getting a lot of oversteer as the tyres were not at their best anymore. It's a pity, as I would naturally want to do better, but at least we only used one set of tyres which leaves us in good shape for the race from a tyre point of view."

Sebastian Buemi also had a disappointing day as he matched his worst result of the year: "I had a tough time in Q2. In the first session, I had a very good lap, lying P10 so everything was looking good as we were ahead of our main competitors. Then, in Q2, we waited quite a long time and, just as we were planning to go out on track, the red flag stopped the session and that changed our plan a bit."

"At the end, I found myself with a two tenths gap, losing the time in the final sector, which represented four places. I am disappointed, but I am still looking forward to tomorrow, because at least we have managed to save a few sets of tyres which will help us in the race."

Last year Alguersuari finished 13th and Buemi managed to finish in the points: 9th.