New Zealand’s Brendon Hartley has today secured a career best result in qualifying for the 2018 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix, placing his Scuderia Toro Rosso STR13 in eleventh position for tomorrow’s race.
 
Appearing to struggle somewhat compared to his rival during Friday’s Free Practice, Hartley was re-energised on Saturday morning when an overnight application of a revised aero package was applied to his car. With teammate Pierre Gasly proving the upgraded package was a clear improvement on Friday, Brendon also reaped the rewards of the upgrade to complete Free Practice three in eleventh and feeling confident that this could be his chance to make it to Q3 later in the day.
 
Confidently making it through to Q2, with the chequered flag flying Hartley was lighting up the timing screens on his final flying lap that looked set to take him through to Q3. Crossing the finish line, his lap was good enough to secure eleventh, a slender one tenth of a second off his rival in tenth.
 
Nevertheless, tomorrow represents Brendon’s best starting position to date and with a clear performance advantage from their new aero package, the team will be hoping to secure their first points of the year.
 
Brendon Hartley – #28 Scuderia Toro Rosso:
“There’s a bit of déjà vu from Melbourne, I just missed out on Q2 there, and in Bahrain I just missed out on Q3! We’ve definitely taken a step in the right direction as yesterday we were really on the back foot from our side of the garage. The team brought an update here which was actually worth a large amount of time. It’s an amazing job from Toro Rosso to bring so much performance from the aero side to the track. I only got the new package for the first time today so I was a bit behind the eight ball but, at the end, I was very close to Q3 that I have to be happy anyway – I think everyone’s done a great job. Unfortunately, I used three sets of tyres in the first part of qualifying – with hitting the bird and breaking my front wing. I don’t know how the bird is, but my front wing was destroyed! It was really close today. It’s a shame I made a small mistake on the last corner!”