Brendon Hartley says he is happy with the progress he has made so far in his second weekend in Formula One despite having his qualifying end early with turbo trouble.
The Toro Rosso driver will start 13th on the grid after he was forced to pull off the circuit on his first flying lap in Q2 with a turbo problem. Despite the setback, Hartley says he is happy with his performance so far this weekend.
“A bit frustrating, because I was looking forward to putting it all on the line in Q2, but that’s motorsport and I’m happy with the progression I’ve made in my second weekend and looking forward to a clean weekend tomorrow,” says Hartley.
“Confidence has been building, I’ve been feeling more at one with the car. Q1 didn’t go perfectly, I’d say. I felt like we had the pace to go ahead of the Williams, if I got everything together. Braking into Turn One in Q2, I absolutely nailed it. I was pumped up for the lap and then the engine went bang.”
Hartley’s issues were the second to afflict Toro Rosso on the day, with Pierre Gasly forced to miss an entire day’s running after pulling off circuit with similar looking issues at the start of Q3.
“They said on the radio they had an idea what the problem was, but I had to unclip and had to hop out the car so I have no idea,” says Hartley.
Toro Rosso’s Chief Engineer, Jonathan Eddolls, revealed that both cars had suffered turbo related problems.
“Unfortunately for Pierre, at the start of his first timed lap in FP3 we had a turbo failure which meant that was the end of his session,” explained Eddols.
“It was a challenging day, we need to understand tonight why so many power units are dying on our chassis. Unfortunately, it looks like tomorrow will be a difficult day for us. However, we will put today behind us, look ahead to tomorrow, remain positive and try to benefit from any opportunity in the race.”
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Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
29th October 2017, 0:18
From the sound of it both cars had the same problem, which must be very frustrating for STR. I did wonder if it was possible for them to have run Hartley’s car in a reduced performance mode, sort of like a “negative Qualifying mode” so as to put less stress on critical parts like the turbo, but I suspect there are more disadvantages to doing this than there are advantages. At least now the mechanics have an excuse to work on the car.