Q&A with Franz Tost, Toro Rosso team principal

As a young lad, Franz Tost’s big hero was Jochen Rindt: his bedroom walls were
covered with posters of the Austrian ace and when it was dissertation time at school,
Franz’s classmates would all groan, as they knew what was coming – another bloody
eulogy to Rindt. Inevitably, Tost found himself behind the wheel, racing a Formula
Ford. He was quick enough to win the 1983 Austrian FF Championship, but he felt he
would not make it to the top as a driver so a degree in Sports Management from
Innsbruck University was next on the agenda. This led to a job at the highly-rated
Walter Lechner Racing School at the Zeltweg circuit.

From there Tost moved to a team management role with EUFRA Racing and at the
end of 1993, he took the post of team manager with Willi Weber’s Formula 3 team. It
was here that he crossed paths with Ralf Schumacher and Weber asked Tost to
accompany the youngster to Japan. This led to looking after Ralf’s interests at Jordan
and then Williams, prior to taking on the role of Operations Manager with BMW’s
Formula 1 programme. From there, he took on the role of Team Principal with the
newly formed Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2005.

Is this a crucial year for the team?

It’s the sixth season of Toro Rosso in Formula 1 and the past five years have shown a
good history for the team, as we had to build everything up almost from zero. We are
quite confident that we have a good future and can have a good year in 2011. We are
still building up our infrastructure. In a Formula 1 team, there is always movement, so
you have to keep an eye on every department trying to improve performance. We
brought in new people for example in the aerodynamic department in Bicester, where
we are currently running two shifts in our wind tunnel. Here in Faenza, especially on
the production side we have increased the number of employees which makes me
quite confident that in 2011 we will have a successful season.

A lot of rule changes, some of them aimed at improving overtaking. What sort of
season do you expect in general terms for the sport?

The major rule changes aimed at overtaking are, the adjustable rear wing and KERS,
the kinetic energy recovery system. Concerning the rear wing adjustment, the rules
state that if a driver is within one second of the car in front, he is allowed to adjust the
rear wing, which means that, at the end of a long straight, he will be 10 to 15
kilometres per hour faster than his competitor, which should enable him to overtake.
Whether during the races it will go like this, we don’t know yet. Regarding the KERS
system, for sure it will improve performance during qualifying, by three to four tenths of
a second and it will also improve the performance during the start procedure, as well
as being a help to the driver when accelerating out of slow speed corners. I think that
with these two systems, we will see more overtaking manoeuvres, although I must say
that, already in 2010 we saw some very good overtaking moves and a very exciting
season. I am looking forward to 2011 and we will see if these changes will increase the
number of overtaking manoeuvres or not.

The longest season ever. How is the team planning to tackle it?

We have increased the number of mechanics and also of some other people such as
those in the electronics department. I do not see any major problems at the start of the
season, but towards the end, with the final race coming at the end of November, it will
mean that the whole organisational job for 2012 has to start much earlier, possibly in
September, October, because you lose the complete month of November, when you
would normally be tackling restructuring processes and other tasks you have to deal
with at the end of the season. Personally, I look forward to every Formula 1 season, because I like going to races and I don’t have any problem with going to 20 races. It
could even be more!

How do you expect our two drivers to perform?

I expect a good performance from both of them: Sebastien Buemi is in his third season
with us, which means he should have the measure of the job and be experienced
enough to race well, but it also depends on how good our car will be. Jaime
Alguersuari is in his second full season and I also expect a performance increase from
his side. If he continues like last year where he improved race by race, showing a
really good performance towards the end of the season and if our car runs well, then I
expect a good season closing the gap to the teams currently in front of us.

Scuderia Toro Rosso is Red Bull’s junior team, aimed at bringing on young
drivers, so what are your thoughts on Daniel Ricciardo joining us as a Friday
morning driver?

I am happy that from the young Red Bull Driver pool, we are seeing another highly
skilled young driver coming to us, as Ricciardo has shown a good performance level in
recent seasons and I don’t see it as an extra work load running him in the first free
practice session on Friday mornings at the races. He will learn all the race tracks and
get used to Formula 1 and apart from this, it provides us with a good possibility to see
where our other two drivers are. I think Toro Rosso is good at this sort of job, as we
showed with Vettel.

Sum up your hopes and fears for the coming season

Generally I have no fears, that is in my nature. The first hope is that we perform well,
with a good, fast competitive car. Apart from that, we need the drivers and the team to
do a good job and if all these components come together then I am convinced we can
have a good season and close the gap to our direct competitors.

Are you excited at the thought of another season starting again?

Yes, I am looking forward to it because not racing during the winter time is a stupid
loss of time!