Daniil Kvyat said he “lost all the balance” in his Toro Rosso STR12 during qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix, as he dropped out in the second segment.
Kvyat finished ninth in Saturday morning’s final practice session, but regressed in qualifying, setting the slowest time out of the 14 Q2 runners.
“In this afternoon’s qualifying we lost all the balance and therefore all the confidence I had in the car up until now was gone,” said Kvyat.
“It just felt the worst it’s been all weekend: I felt I had no grip anymore and my rear was sliding a lot; it’s really disappointing.”
Team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr. expressed relief at making it through to Q3, but rued not being able to clock a lap on new Ultra Soft tyres due to yellow flags in the final minute.
“Before the weekend started, we knew this track was going to be quite tricky for us, but we found a really good set-up in FP3 that made me feel really confident with the car,” he said.
“As soon as the qualifying session started, we put in very competitive lap times and a P10 is a good place to start in tomorrow’s race.
“It’s just a shame about the yellow flags at the end of Q3 – I wasn’t able to set a time on new tyres.
“My Q3 lap time was done on used tyres and we’re only a tenth behind the Force India [drivers] and [Romain] Grosjean.”
