Bourdais: Things starting to work for me

The Toro Rosso driver, overshadowed by teammate Sebastian Vettel for most of the season, put on his strongest qualifying performance on Saturday, finishing in ninth position after topping the times in Q1.

Bourdais had qualified in tenth in the last race in Valencia.

The Frenchman admitted he was very pleased with his and his team's performance and he feels things are finally starting to come together.

"A qualifying session when I can get out of the car and say that I drove well and that the team, as usual did a good job," said Bourdais.

"The car worked well even if we couldn't mix it too much with those ahead of us. But let's see what strategies the others are on in terms of fuel loads tomorrow.

"A couple of tenths is all that separated us from sixth or seventh. It's beginning to come together and it's been a good weekend so far.

"I feel this track and its corners suit me better. It was nice to see my name at the top of a timesheet in Q1. It's been a long time."

Bourdais outqualified Vettel, 10th today, for the fourth time this year.

The young German was also happy with his result and said he did not expect Toro Rosso to do so well.

"I'm quite happy and we can be satisfied to get both cars in Q3, which we did not expect at this track," he said. "It was a strong qualifying performance. I was struggling a bit on those sections where the driver doesn't have to do much. I could not find the pace my teammate had.

"I messed up my last run a bit but it didn't affect the result in the end. I think we have a good strategy for both cars so let's see what happens. At the moment, I'm starting on the dirty side of the track but if it rains for the race it becomes the clean side."