Friday: Toro Rosso takes advantage in the rain

The Scuderia Toro Rosso, as usual, is present when the sky is threatening and rain falls. On this first day of testing in Japan, Sébastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari were not afraid to brave the elements despite their young age. With good performances, their first impressions of this circuit can only be positive.

The Swiss was faster than his teammate, achieving the 5th and 6th fastest times, while the Spaniard placed 14th and then 9th, remarkable positions for the rookie. It is indeed a good driving experience in the rain. Results to be confirmed on a drier track!

Sébastien Buemi – 5th and 6th:

I really enjoyed my first day of driving on this track, even though the conditions were very wet. It’s a fantastic circuit. Anyway, it’s always useful to drive in the rain and we saw during this morning’s session, when everyone went out, that we have a very fast car in these conditions. We have some new parts for which we need to be sure we won’t have reliability issues and so far it’s been fine on that front.

Jaime Alguersuari – 14th and 9th:

It was good to get an idea of the car in the rain, and we made progress even though I wasn’t pushing too hard, but at least we know how the car works on intermediate and extreme wet tires. I felt very comfortable and I’m looking forward to the rest of the weekend. I hope we have a dry session tomorrow morning with the aim to improve. My first impression of the Suzuka circuit is that it’s really nice. You can feel there’s a lot of grip in the fast corners in the wet, so in the dry, I think it could be incredible. With the aerodynamic downforce we have and now on slick tires, I think everyone’s lap times in the dry will be much faster than in 2006.