Bourdais F1 career in doubt as yet another teammate faster

Sebastien Bourdais tries hard in the Toro Rosso car, but it wasn't enough as his inexperienced teammate, Sebastien Buemi, has shown more pace.

Last year Sebastian Vettel buried his Toro Rosso teammate Sebastien Bourdais, but Bourdais had come from the USA so the excuse was that he had to learn F1 and the unfamiliar tracks. His other excuse was that the car did not suit his style.

This year Bourdais is considered the veteran on the team but once again his new rookie teammate Sebastien Buemi has come in and beat Bourdais both in preseason testing and Saturday in qualifying for the season opener Buemi has immediately outqualified Bourdais, who was dead last.

This has led many pundits to conclude Bourdais just isn't good enough for F1 and should have stayed in America to race where the talent level isn't as high. Bourdais cleaned up in Champ Car and did so well in IROC NASCAR great Mark Martin said he was the best driver he had raced against. Martin has not tried F1 so he doesn't really understand what real talent is.

It was a disappointing qualifying session for the Scuderia Toro Rosso at the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne as both drivers failed to make it to Q2. Rookie Buemi will start the Australian race from 16th position tomorrow while team mate Bourdais will be the last to depart from the grid.

Sebastien Buemi said, "I have to say I found the pace at which qualifying happens rather quick! You go out, you come back, you change tires, you go out again. You need to stay relaxed. I think we did quite a good job with what we had and missed out on Q2 by half a tenth. I am quite happy, as these days have been something of a test session for us and we improved the car quite a lot from yesterday morning through to now. I have taken confidence from what I have done so far and feel I am going to be capable of doing this job, even if I am quite young. The visibility in the sunshine was a bit better than yesterday, but we have to get used to it."

Sebastien Bourdais had his usual excuses, "It was closer than expected to getting to Q2 from a team point of view as Seb just missed out on 15th place to the McLaren by a fraction. My car wasn't too bad: on my second run I made a slight mistake and on my third, unfortunately my out lap was too slow and I did not get the tires up to temperature. But it's encouraging, as the Red Bull car is going well and we are not as far off the pace as I had expected. We have made good progress in terms of understanding the car. Starting last, it will be a tough race, but I will attack as much as I can and hope the race is as eventful as last year."