Disappointing Weekend For Buemi At Silverstone

It was another disappointing weekend for Sebastien Buemi at Silverstone. His performance was reasonable, but the STR4 just wasn't fast enough.

Toro Rosso have struggled to find pace in recent races and there was little change at the British Grand Prix. The STR4 may have been slightly faster thanks to some upgrades, but it didn't improve relative to the other teams, who also made upgrades.

Buemi also encountered difficulties during Qualifying, which meant he qualified last. First, he missed most of Final Practice with a hydraulic issue, then had a problem with his gearbox's quick-shift function during Qualifying itself.

Afterwards, Buemi said:

It's been a bad weekend so far, with a few small problems and if you don't get many clean laps without any trouble, then when you go into qualifying, you really pay the price.

It is disappointing that I couldn't use the quick-shift on the gearbox in qualifying, which cost me at least three tenths and that is a big difference here.

But that's racing and now we will have to see what we can do tomorrow. It will be a difficult race whatever happens.

Prophetic words.

Buemi had a difficult race, finishing dead last (of those who finished in a classified position).

He started on the back row of the grid, where he was in good company - he lined up next to McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, the reigning world champion who's fortunes have taken a turn for the worse this year.

Interestingly, the other Toro Rosso (Sebastien Bourdais) and the other McLaren (Heikki Kovalainen) ended up taking each other out, but that's another story.

During the race, Buemi's car had problems with maintaining speed on worn tyres, which seemed to be the main cause of the STR4's lack of speed. After the race, he said:

It was a very tough race and we struggled to be on the pace and now we must try and work out why, as we have been quicker than this earlier in the weekend.

On worn tyres especially, the car was very difficult to drive.

This problem, combined with his low position on the grid, meant that Buemi really struggled during the race.

Still, apart from the slow car, Buemi himself did reasonably well at Silverstone. He drove a solid race with few errors and the mere fact that he finished the race shouldn't be overlooked. It was his second race in a row where he made it to the finish line, after a run of three grand prixs where he didn't finish.

Looking forward, it seems Toro Rosso aren't expecting much improvement for the next race in Germany, with Buemi saying:

Nurburgring will be another difficult weekend, but we are due to get some updates for Hungary, which will allow us to be more competitive and perform much better.

Let's hope those updates when they come through in the following race in Hungary, give Sebastien Buemi a substantial boost in performance.