Daniil Kvyat ha endured a rather tough 2017 season, having car issues or involving himself in a number of accidents with fellow drivers. The Russian has built a slight reputation this year for causing collisions during the race and is only two penalty points away from being handed a race ban.
Kvyat was retained by Toro Rosso for the 2017 season after the team looked over Pierre Gasly who won the GP2 championship. Doubt continues to linger over the future of Kvyat, as Gasly is waiting in the wings, ready for an opportunity to be brought into the team.
Kvyat believes that promising weekends were ruined by different factors such as technical issues or first lap incidents. As F1 hibernates in its summer break, the 23-year-old spoke to his official website about his season so far.
"The season opening was quite promising," he said. "I believe that in general, we had many promising weekends, but we just didn't manage to get the maximal outcome. It was either technical issues, or I got in trouble during the first lap, which happened twice, what prevented us from scoring more points. Many times we had minor issues here and there which damaged us big time.
"But in situations like that, you just need to be patient. Sooner or later, the result will come: we have all the necessary ingredients. So, we just need to continue doing our work, trying to have cleaner Saturdays and Sundays and the reward will be there. Everything is under control, and you need to be pleased with your job, enjoy doing it. That's the recipe."
At the end of the month, Formula 1 will return for the second part of the season. Kvyat thinks that the first couple of tracks after the summer break will not be suited to the Toro Rosso, but in the following races, he hopes he will be able to extract some positive results.
"I believe we'll have a good chance to show ourselves already in Spa. Probably it would be tougher in Monza because high top speed on the straights is not our joker. But after that, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia: we should be competitive on all of those tracks. Our car is best at the braking and on the slow circuits with a couple of fast corners. We keep developing the car, our competitors make progress as well, so there are chances on any circuits. Every race is a new challenge."
Fergal Walsh
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Bahrain International Circuit - Winter testing
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Realistically their main rivals at the moment seem to be McLaren and Renault. From the tracks he mentions, they will likely outperform both at Monza, but Singapore and Malaysia should benefit McLaren. Suzuka is a tricky one, since its all about the whole package, and the Japanese weather do tend to shake things up. Alot from now on will depend on how well Honda can improve their PU, since the two Renault teams will be sitting ducks on that matter.
On a different topic: are they still going to Barcelona for the winter tests, or were they going to the Hungaroring?