06.17.07
Speed Surprised at Lack of Speed
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Scott Speed qualified his Toro Rosso Ferrari 20th for his home Grand Prix of the United States. But Speed, America’s only F1 driver, said the car will perform better in the race than it did in qualifying, and he believes he can make up ground.
“We know we have worse acceleration than all of the guys in front of us,” he said. “The only possible way we can race is to take off all of the wing. Certainly, in the infield, we’re sliding around more than everyone else.
“I think maybe we can have a race car that we can possibly do something with. So far this weekend we’ve had great reliability. Hopefully that will continue. I think we were worse off than we expected. We knew this track was going to hurt us because of the gearbox.
“We’re a bit surprised that we’re as far down in the order as we are. But in actuality, our pace isn’t that much slower than the guys in front of us. Being fast down the straightaway, I think we’ll have something we can race with tomorrow.
“It’s not near as bad as it looks after qualifying because we’re fast down the straightaway. Hopefully we’ll get a bit lucky in the race, and something can happen. Points would be big.”