Toro Rosso driver Jean-Eric Vergne is positive that things will fair better for him in the second half of the season than they did in the first half.
The Frenchman, who is in his third season with Toro Rosso, has had his season plagued with unreliability from the car’s side so far, having suffered five retirements down to mechanical failures or through incidents without any fault from himself.
Despite this season showing a pick up in his qualifying performances in comparison to his team-mate, Vergne has rarely been able to convert them into regular points finishes and in an exclusive interview with GPUpdate.net, he was pleased with his performances and the speed from the car, but is looking up to the team for improvements on the reliability side of things.
“I have had a good first half of the season. There were some positives and some negatives.” Vergne told GPUpdate.net.
“The negative is that we had too many retirements. The positive is that every time I had a retirement I was always in the position to score points. So that is a good thing, you know. I think we could have scored a lot more points, but we still have the second half of the season to get all those points.
“So I’m quite confident, also that the team can give me a more reliable car and that it can even go quicker.”
Vergne points to the last race in Hungary as the high point of his season currently, where he was running as high as 2nd and defending from championship leader Nico Rosberg and world champions Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton.
The 24 year-old said: “I really enjoyed running in the front with those other guys. That was a nice feeling and it makes me want to have more of those moments in the second part of the season.”
