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Buemi Disappointed with Toro Rosso's Suspension Failure

Sebastien Buemi was today the victim of a spectacular yet very awkward crash in the first practice session of the Chinese Grand Prix, when both his car's front wheels flew off under braking and his STR5 was projected into the gravel.

Further investigations of the incident revealed that the problem was related to a broken front right upright, which was designed specifically for the race in China. However, until this point, the team is yet to confirm what was the exact cause of the upright's failure.

What's important however is the fact that Sebastien Buemi's car did not hit a wall or a tire barrier in the process – despite the fact that the incident occurred at the end of the longest straight of the circuit – but was stalled into the gravel. Apparently, it didn't shatter his confidence of racing an F1 car either, although the incident did leave him disappointed for his lack of mileage on Friday.

There's not much to say about what happened in FP1. I braked, the wheels came off and that was it. Physically, I was fine though,” said Buemi after the crash. Following his FP1 incident, the Swiss driver sat inside his team's garage for the entire afternoon, missing out on the 90-minute FP2.

I am extremely disappointed that, once again, through no fault of my own, I have been unable to run for almost all of the three hours available. I will have to try and catch up on Saturday morning and we will be relying on Jaime's data from today to see which way to go,” added the 21-year old racer.

His teammate Jaime Alguersuari was also kept in the pits for the last few minutes of FP1 – as the team feared there was something wrong with the car's suspension system – but once the problem was figured out he did plenty of mileage during FP2. Overall, he completed a record 43 laps, setting the 8th fastest time of the day.
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