Daniil Kvyat, Toro Rosso, Monaco, 2019

Kvyat says he’s “driving better than ever” since return

2019 Canadian Grand Prix

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Daniil Kvyat says he’s reached a new level of performance since returning to Toro Rosso, the team which dropped him before the end of the 2017 season.

Speaking after he achieved the best result since his comeback with seventh place in the Monaco Grand Prix, Kvyat said he is “in very good form” at the moment.

“I’m very happy with how things are going for me. I’m driving better than I’ve ever been, so I hope it will bring very good things in the near future.”

Although Toro Rosso scored its best result of the season so far at Monaco, one of F1’s most unusual tracks, Kvyat believes the team can expect to be competitive on a broad range of circuits.

“We’ve been good in every track this year. We’ve been improving after Australia onwards very well. Already in the race in Australia at some point I was the fastest car on the track and then it’s just getting better and better.

“In Bahrain maybe we understood what I don’t like from the car and we managed to improve things better and better. We did a lot of good things to understand, to analyse.

“I don’t think it’s just track related because I think we were the fastest midfield team in Barcelona as well and here we are as well in the mix. So I think this is that we are getting better and better.”

Having been narrowly beaten to first in the midfield fight by Carlos Sainz Jnr in Monaco, Kvyat believes the team can compete for a similar position in Canada.

“How things have been going, if we find the right balance we can again be in the mix for the ‘best of the rest’, hopefully. So if we do our job well I think we can be competitive there.”

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Gabriele Koslowski
Gabriele Koslowski first began following Formula 1 during the early noughties, and is a director of a Belgian motorsport media company. During the past...
Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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6 comments on “Kvyat says he’s “driving better than ever” since return”

  1. I just hope he doesn’t loose his head and keeps his current driving style, he certainly has improved a lot since his last stint in F1.

  2. That is probably true, but the bar wasn’t that high either

    1. Basil (@flyingbasil)
      4th June 2019, 18:08

      @johnmilk
      Have to disagree with that. Before losing a seat at RB his pure speed was up there. And moving to that seat he was also incredibly quick. But he was always finding himself in bad places and made mistakes. So the bar was there from the start, he just failed to reach it after demotion from RB. This year he is clearly a much much more careful driver, while being a lot faster in races in terms of pace most of the time.

  3. Adam (@rocketpanda)
    4th June 2019, 12:02

    He’s been driving pretty well since he came back – of the four Red Bull backed drivers I’d say he’s only behind Verstappen.

  4. After a bit of an unimpressive start, he’s done decently well. However, he should be conscious of the fact that he’s a seat warmer for Red Bull, and any opportunities for a race seat beyond TR exist only in other teams. Or he can always return to a behind-the-scenes seat, he seemed to have done well at Ferrari.

    1. @phylyp Yes, indeed. He indeed wouldn’t be where he is now if Red Bull had had more eligible-for-super license drivers in the pool before the start of the season. The same applies to Albon to an extent as well, though, and Hartley wouldn’t have been brought back either had the list of available drivers at the end of ’17/beginning of ’18 been more extensive than it was at the time.

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