Buemi: Tenth the limit for Toro Rosso

The Scuderia Toro Rosso driver qualified tenth for the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai and explained afterwards that this was the maximum he could have achieved with the STR4 despite not using his super-soft tyres in Q3.

"I am really happy to be in Q3, as it's more than I had expected," said the Swiss. "I don't think I could have got any higher up the order.

"On low fuel, the car was very good, but we didn't have any new options left for Q3, so I had to do three flying laps on the prime, so considering that, we can be satisfied with this.

"The team worked really well, doing a fantastic job to improve the car a lot since the start of the season and today it worked very well. Now, I am very much looking forward to tomorrow's race."

Team-mate Sebastien Bourdais did not make it past the first stage of qualifying and blamed his 16th position on a mistake: "I tried to optimise my line to take Turn 8, but I cut the apex too much and got on the marbles and the dirt on the left side and so the car never really turned in.

"Because of the dirt on the tyres, the next few corners were a disaster, losing me around half a second."