Dany Kvyat can't explain where Toro Rosso's race performance came from

Dany Kvyat turned a hitherto disastrous weekend into points in Spain – but the Toro Rosso driver could not explain why his car suddenly improved on Sunday.

The Russian qualified last as the team struggled to get updates to work as planned, although he gained a place when Stoffel Vandoorne was penalized. After an eventful race he worked his way into ninth place at the flag, having dumped his medium tires after a single lap, and then run to the flap on what was in effect a one-stop strategy with two sets of softs.

“It feels great, I’m proud of myself and my team of engineers,” he said. “We never gave up, and we pushed hard. A tough race, but excellent strategy. Everything happened right today, but what I want to understand now is I want to bring my qualifying from the first three races, which was my strong point actually – back to me, which will give us a lot of points. That’s all I want.

“I knew something would happen today. We worked well overnight, trying to understand the issues, but to be honest I still don’t have an explanation why the car clicked on in the race again. It was un-drivable on Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday it was the normal car I’m used to drive. We’ll have a long meeting with the engineers for sure.”

Kyvat finished the Spanish race with blisters on his hands.

“It’s normal on the high speed corners, the steering gets heavy, so you are leaning on it. Because I did every lap like in qualifying, it was tough for me. But it was completely OK, I wasn’t struggling or anything, just now I feel I actually had to give my all.”

Regarding the upcoming race in Monaco he said: “I really like the track. In the past I’ve always been good there, but again we need to be careful now in every session I want the car to be as competitive as it was in the first few races.”