Jaime Alguersuari had to make four pit stops in pain as he struggled with tyre degradation.
| Sebastien Buemi | Jaime Alguersuari | |
| Qualifying position | 11 | 13 |
| Qualifying time comparison (Q2) | 1’23.231 (-0.463) | 1’23.694 |
| Race position | 14 | 16 |
| Laps | 65/66 | 64/66 |
| Pit stops | 3 | 4 |
Toro Rosso drivers’ lap times throughout the race (in seconds):
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | |
| Sebastien Buemi | 100.611 | 93.281 | 92.686 | 93.231 | 92.265 | 91.834 | 92.064 | 92.421 | 95.014 | 109.552 | 90.964 | 92.973 | 91.695 | 92.987 | 93.166 | 91.431 | 91.745 | 91.647 | 91.65 | 91.542 | 91.623 | 91.799 | 92.144 | 92.631 | 95.502 | 112.156 | 90.049 | 91.987 | 91.859 | 90.537 | 90.357 | 90.932 | 94.728 | 90.57 | 90.573 | 90.974 | 90.771 | 91.065 | 91.713 | 91.39 | 93.954 | 97.423 | 111.01 | 90.314 | 90.378 | 90.545 | 90.308 | 91.458 | 91.759 | 91.437 | 90.638 | 90.646 | 90.889 | 90.286 | 90.578 | 90.867 | 90.839 | 91.215 | 90.295 | 90.599 | 91.343 |
| Jaime Alguersuari | 101.876 | 93.61 | 92.804 | 92.833 | 92.55 | 92.494 | 92.683 | 92.72 | 92.665 | 93.495 | 97.136 | 109.04 | 90.821 | 91.172 | 93.233 | 94.451 | 91.177 | 91.339 | 91.439 | 92.788 | 91.858 | 92.163 | 93.903 | 95.541 | 107.716 | 89.724 | 91.464 | 90.501 | 92.26 | 90.157 | 94.039 | 90.706 | 91.117 | 91.433 | 91.78 | 97.303 | 108.906 | 91.904 | 91.457 | 93.584 | 90.991 | 91.184 | 92.177 | 91.004 | 90.995 | 91.828 | 90.936 | 91.394 | 92.806 | 94.318 | 109.167 | 89.132 | 90.351 | 89.618 | 89.436 | 89.549 | 89.348 | 89.477 | 89.286 | 89.453 | 91.99 |
Sebastien Buemi
Buemi’s qualifying effort earned high praise from technical director Giorgio Ascanelli:
“I think eleventh place is a bit better than expected, because at the end of the day, Seb pulled out a magnificent lap. Jaime’s position is a more accurate reflection of our standing, even if he did not get it quite right for whatever reason.
“It was a difficult session as the temperatures were higher and the car was tail-happy, so Jaime was unable to manage the tyres in the final sector, but like I said Seb did a superb lap with our aggressive choice of only doing one lap on that final run.”
He briefly held eighth at the start before Felipe Massa passed him around the outside of turn five. Then Jenson Button demoted him to tenth on lap five.
He pitted early on lap nine and although he was again able to make one pit stop fewer than his team mate, it required a 23-lap run on hards at the end of the race. Although he was significantly more competitive on the hard tyres than Alguersuari, he fell to 14th at the end of the race after being passed by Adrian Sutil.
Buemi said: “I managed to run at a good pace, but I think we were a bit unlucky to lose a lot of time when I got lapped. Also our strategy was not quite perfect and on top of that, we were generally a little bit too slow and Force India and Sauber beat us fair and square.”
Sebastien Buemi 2011 form guide
Jaime Alguersuari
Lost time with an engine fault in first practice.
Was one of seven drivers to make four stops as he had more problems with tyre degradation:
“After around 12 laps my tyres were gone, which is why I ended up doing a four stop race. Overall, in terms of my lap times, maybe this race was very slightly more positive than the last one in Turkey.
“We really need to deal with the tyre degradation and there is a lot of work still to do, if we are to be competitive and fighting for points.”
Jaime Alguersuari 2011 form guide
Daniel Ricciardo
Drove Buemi’s car in first practice.
2011 Spanish Grand Prix
Image © Red Bull/Getty images
BasCB (@bascb)
23rd May 2011, 13:15
How many races now have we seen Buemi do one less pitstop than ALG…?
Still feels hard to get any real enthusiasm for this team. What if they started getting a target to work for instead of just hanging around being the second RB owned team?
GeeMac (@geemac)
23rd May 2011, 14:28
Agreed. STR, and to a lesser extent Force India, are propbably the only teams out there that are completely unlovable.
They don’t seem to have any real long term goals, other than possibly avoiding being completely unremarkable, which they aren’t doing very well.
Fixy (@)
23rd May 2011, 14:58
I have seen some good performances recently, beating Force India and Sauber is not bad, but in races they end up always behind sadly.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
23rd May 2011, 20:17
Exactly my sentiments. There seem to be few reasons to support them as they are evidently under little pressure to perform.
Mr draw
23rd May 2011, 13:46
The Pirelli-tyres seem to reveal Alguersuari’s weakness: for some reason he is very hard on the tyres. Or maybe the Toro Rosso is very tyre-unfriendly, as both drivers usually finish several places lower than they started.
Bruce
23rd May 2011, 13:56
Buemi really stepped it up this year. Kudos!
Mitchtj
23rd May 2011, 15:35
Thats fine, Ricciardo will be better on them next year im sure!
James_mc (@james_mc)
23rd May 2011, 19:25
It’s all very well blaming tyres – Massa struggled last year and he’s improved markedly since, but there is a school of thought that Liuzzi struggled on last year’s Bridgestones and he wasn’t given much of a chance to prove that it was the tyres rather than him.
I don’t think that there’s much between the two drivers in terms of absolute speed/performance.