The new challenge at Toro Rosso

The news STR5 chassis was unveiled this morning in Valencia ahead of the first three-day pre-season test.

Unlike its predecessors, the STR5 package does not rely on Red Bull Technologies, but is the product of the work carried out in the Faenza and Bicester facilities.

Franz Tost, team principal

“2010 is a landmark year for Scuderia Toro Rosso as the new regulations demand that we go it alone in terms of designing and building our car in-house. After four years of working in collaboration with Red Bull Technology, the STR5 is the first car that is one hundred percent down to our own endeavours.

“Creating the necessary infrastructure to tackle this task has been our biggest challenge, possibly more difficult than actually producing the car itself. We have taken on an additional eighty staff and expanded our facility to accommodate them, including a Machine Shop to increase our production capacity. In addition, we have commissioned a wind tunnel in Bicester, England, which we bought from Red Bull. It will take time for the highly skilled team we have assembled to learn to work together as efficiently as possible.

“Making predictions for the coming season is a dangerous trap, but if pushed, I would say we must aim to finish in the top eight in the Constructors’ Championship, while giving our young drivers everything they need to improve, as well as optimising our infrastructure in order to be as competitive as possible in 2010 and beyond.”

Giorgio Ascanelli, technical director

“At the end of last year, we had already increased our staff to around one hundred and fifty and now we have two hundred. At the end of March ’09, we got the green light as to what actually constituted being an F1 Constructor.

"That was the starting point for building up our operation in such a way that we could actually design a car that was achievable in engineering terms, working in a different way to the methods we had adopted in the past.

"Being recognised as a Constructor involves owning the intellectual property rights to what are defined as the listed parts: these are effectively the monocoque, the safety structures that are subject to homologation and crash testing, which means the rear and front structures, primary and secondary roll-over structures and the complete aerodynamic package, the suspension, fuel and cooling systems.

“Before even thinking about producing a car, we had to acquire the right tools to carry out these tasks and also hire the people who are to use these structures. Finding fifty people and putting them in an environment where they can do their job has been a tough task.

"As for the challenge we face this season, to quote Mao Tse-tung, “we should not be talking about what we will do when we have crossed the river, we must first get the bridges and ships with which to cross the river.” We have started by building those bridges and ships. We are not quite there yet and, at this stage, getting everyone to work together in a productive fashion is our most important task.”

Ben Butler, chief designer

“The STR5 is definitely a case of evolution rather than revolution. We have taken a fantastic 2009 package as our starting point and we did not want to do too much with it, apart from changing and adapting it to take into consideration the regulation changes.

"Therefore, the 2010 car can be viewed as being on the conservative side, however, this approach was partly dictated by the fact that the new technical regulations came out relatively late and we had to produce a time line which delivered a chassis early enough.

"However, it is not a negative picture and we have viewed these circumstances as challenges which we had to deal with, bearing in mind this is the first year that we have to tackle the entire design of the car in-house with what is effectively a new team.

"It is easy to say there is little change between the 2009 and 2010 cars, but there have been a lot of significant evolutions that we have had to put in place, primarily to ensure reliability, and which will hopefully prove to be competitive once the racing starts.”