Bourdais hopeful of points finish

Bourdais believes he extracted the best from his car after finishing in 15th position, and the Frenchman is confident about his team's race pace.

"My first time in Q2. We came close before and now we have made it," said the Toro Rosso driver, making his grand prix debut this season.

"The cars we are racing against are in similar positions, so we could not really expect much more. I had hoped to be a contender for twelfth if we'd had a perfect qualifying but clearly the gap is too big.

"I think we did the best with what we had and the team worked well, worked really hard. We can take satisfaction from that, keep on working and wait for the new car.

"In race trim yesterday, the car was quite good over two long runs and its pace was fairly consistent. If we get to the finish and others have problems, maybe we can aim to be in the points."

Teammate Sebastian Vettel was unable to make the cut after Q1, the German having to settle for a disappointing 19th place after struggling with his car's set-up.

"I am disappointed not to have got further than Q1," he said. "It has been difficult all weekend and yesterday we struggled to set up the car and we still haven't found the right set up. That made qualifying difficult as you need everything to be right on the car to produce one quick flying lap.

"We were not strong enough. Of course, it is partly down to me as I drive the car! Struggling with the set-up, I felt it was more a case of the car driving me than me driving the car."