YAS MARINA, Abu Dhabi -- Daniil Kvyat has called on Toro Rosso to get to the bottom of his back-to-back punctures in Abu Dhabi after they compromised most of the team's Friday running.
Kvyat suffered a left rear puncture in FP1 and FP2. In the first instance he was able to pull the car over and stop, but the second occurred at the high-speed right-hander at Turn 16. Fortunately the Russian driver's car stopped clear of the wall and he was able to return to the pits, but he did not emerge again, while teammate Carlos Sainz's session was also ended prematurely as a precaution.
An investigation is ongoing overnight to solve the issue and Kvyat says the only thing he can do on Saturday is go out and make up for lost track time and trust the team has found a solution.
"I think it's going to take a long time," he said. "We just need to understand ... It will be a deeper dig after what happened. It's happened twice on my car. I lost a lot of mileage. The other car lost mileage too so it's not cool. Tonight, there will be a big push to understand the problem."
"It's cost us a full Friday. I didn't do anything today. We'll do our best to be in the correct window tomorrow and just go out and hope the issue will be fixed. There's nothing I can do from my side. I'm fully in the hands of the team at this stage."
This weekend is not the first instance of Toro Rosso's cars having punctures, with Carlos Sainz suffering two in one practice session during the U.S. Grand Prix weekend.
When asked if the repeated failures, and Toro Rosso's inability to solve them, was a concern, he replied: "There was some precedent it was happening a bit lately. I think we've just got to dig really deep and it'll be solved I'm pretty sure. The team knows about it. From my side, all I can do is go out and drive."