Hungarian GP - Toro Rosso Ferrari - RaceIt was not a good weekend for the Toro Rosso Ferrari team with more reliability issues for Sebastian Vettel on race day that forced his retirement while Sebastien Bourdais suffered a fuel fire in the pits and then was forced to make
an additional stop en route to 18th position, three laps down.
Sebastien Bourdais
“There have been two sides to this weekend: it got off to a good start and then I had some problems in qualifying. The race also started quite well, as I had a good pace. Then it all went to hell at the first pit stop, as the guys had to use the fire extinguisher and I got a lot of foam on my visor. It happened again at the second stop and this time I had foam inside and outside my visor and couldn’t see a thing so had to make another stop to get it cleaned. By this stage, we had lost so much time, there was nothing else to do and I preferred to make the extra stop as the lack of visibility was dangerous.”
Sebastian Vettel
“I didn’t have a very good pit stop and that caused the engine to overheat and that messed up some parts and I had no choice but to retire. It’s a shame as I had a good pace from the car this afternoon. I made a mistake in running wide at the last corner on the first lap and lost a lot of places. I was stuck behind Barrichello and it was impossible to overtake.
This hasn’t been a good weekend and that goes back to Friday when I suffered reliability problems and then came the disappointment this afternoon.”
Franz Tost
“There can be no excuses: this was a bad weekend for the whole team. It seems that Budapest is not Vettel’s place as we had technical problems on Friday and this continued in the race, as he had to retire. At this time, we are not exactly sure what the failure was, but we suspect it was due to overheating. As for Bourdais, he made a good start, moving up from 19th on the grid to 16th. Then, at his first pit stop on lap 32, we had a problem with the fuel system which caught fire."
"Fortunately it was extinguished in time, but the problem reoccurred at his second stop. On this occasion he had to make a further stop to have the extinguisher foam removed from his visor as he could not see. We must now carry out a full investigation of all the problems on both cars, after what was a very disappointing weekend for the whole team.”
