Buemi Hits at Toro Rosso for Reserve Driver Policy

Sebastien Buemi argued recently that Scuderia Toro Rosso's driver scheme for the 2011 Formula 1 campaign will not suit him very well. As announced by the team earlier this winter, Australian racer Daniel Ricciardo will drive the STR6 in the first practice of almost each Friday this season, meaning that every two race weekends one of the team's existing drivers will have to miss out on 90-minutes of track action.

And although the team confirmed last week that it will be Jaime Alguersuari who will sit out first in the Friday practice session of the Australian Grand Prix, Buemi admitted his frustration over STR's strategy in an interview with the AAP news agency.

“It's pretty difficult if you change the driver all the time,” he insisted, according to the aforementioned source. “You lose time getting up to speed with them.”

As argued by many, Ricciardo's appointment as STR's new reserve driver will put great pressure on both Alguersuari and Buemi this season, who will have to push themselves to the limit in order to keep their jobs at Faenza. While the Spaniard stated many times before that he'll be aiming for Mark Webber's job at Red Bull next year, Buemi is widely regarded as the driver in Toro Rosso's lineup who will tackle a “make or break” campaign in 2011.

For several times in the past few months, Red Bull's motorsport advisor Helmut Marko – the man who practically has life or death rights over RBR's and STR's drivers lineups – hinted that Buemi will have to deliver some strong results this year or else the collaboration between the two parties will end. Recently, he argued that Buemi's nerves consist one of his weaknesses as a driver.

“If he can get rid of that, in 2011 we will again have a lot of fun together, as we did before,” Marko was quoted as saying by the Blick newspaper. “This year Sebastien must press his talent.”