Red flag cost me Q2 spot, says Bourdais

Date published : 20 Jun 2009 - 18:15:08

Toro Rosso s Sebastien Bourdais believes he could have got through to the second stage of qualifying at Silverstone had the red flag not come out for Adrian Sutil s accident late in the session. While STR has remained marooned towards the bottom of the times this weekend like it has been in recent races, Bourdais reckons his STR4 was still quick enough to find the extra 0.167s he needed to turn 17th into 15th. I felt comfortable inside the cockpit and I think I had the pace to make it into Q2, but the red flag came at just the wrong time for me, he said. It's a real shame. He reckons the team has made some progress with the set-up of its car since struggling at Istanbul Park, but says similar progress from its rivals has cancelled out its speed improvements. I think we improved the car by two or three tenths compared to Turkey, but so did the others, Bourdais added. Our car is much nicer to drive and a bit quicker. This is an awesome track and when you get the car set up right, a qualifying lap is an unbelievable feeling. Rookie team-mate Sebastien Buemi, meanwhile, qualified last after a problematic day saw him sidelined for most of final practice with to a hydraulic issue and then unable to use the quick-shift function on his gearbox in qualifying. He reckons the latter problem cost him the three tenths of a second he would have needed to move off the back row and knows he is now in for a long 60-lap race. "It's been a bad weekend so far, with a few small problems and if you don't get many clean laps without any trouble, then when you go into qualifying, you really pay the price, said the Swiss, who will share the back row with McLaren s world champion Lewis Hamilton. It is disappointing that I couldn't use the quick-shift on the gearbox in qualifying, which cost me at least three tenths and that is a big difference here. But that's racing and now we will have to see what we can do tomorrow. It will be a difficult race whatever happens."