Toro Rosso: Losing point positions a shame

Toro Rosso says that it is a shame it missed out on scoring points in Japan after an impressive qualifying display on Saturday. The Red Bull junior squad started the race from sixth and seventh on the grid, but were on the back foot from the get-go.

Brendon Hartley had a poor getaway lap and dropped down to tenth place before the end of the first lap. Both cars extended their stints on the super soft tyres and pitted close to lap 30. However, the team was undercut by its competitors and further lost out.

"I don't feel like I did too much wrong at the start of the race, but I just couldn't get the power down," said Hartley. "For the whole first stint I didn't have much grip and poor traction cost me a lot of time.

"Then on the second set I found myself in traffic, I made a couple of overtakes on both of the Williams but in the end I got stuck behind Marcus. It's a real shame that both cars are outside the points after such a promising result in Qualifying yesterday."

Speaking about his race, Hartley's teammate Pierre Gasly added: "It was a good start as I managed to overtake Brendon and the first stint was great. I felt good with the car behind Romain and I was pretty close to him, but then we went too long on the first stint as we didn't want to pit into traffic but then several cars undercut us.

"We probably didn't make the best decisions, but that happens sometimes, it's easy to say in hindsight that we could have made different choices. It's just a shame after such a good Qualifying yesterday, It would have been great to reward the team and Honda here in Japan for their home race with some points today."