Toro Rosso ready for KERS

Only a week to go till testing starts in Valencia and its busy busy busy in Scuderia Toro Rosso’s Faenza home and we don’t mind betting that’s the same scenario for the other 11 teams too.

The new car build continues, with the guys working shifts around the clock and later this week, we will be firing up the engine for the very first time in an STR6. While all that’s going on, Sébastien and Jaime will be coming in for final seat fittings. After that, we hope to have time for a very quick middle-of-the-night photo shoot, before the car heads off by road to Valencia for the very test of the year. We will be pulling the wraps off the car as soon as the sun comes up on 1st February.

One interesting novelty on the car– at least it us for us, as we didn’t use it in 2009 – is the Kinetic Energy Recovery System. Basically, it turns the energy created when the driver brakes into power for the car, a system already available on several road cars, as we all strive to be green and efficient. We are fortunate in that we are using the Ferrari KERS system, which proved effective when they used it in 2009. The men from Maranello have a good knowledge of all the practical aspects of running the system. In conjunction with Ferrari we are running a training programme prior to testing, so that we do the maximum possible in order to ensure the highest level of safety for the guys and to make sure we deal adequately with the electrical side of the KERS.

We have held meetings and seminars with all the race personnel and not just the mechanics and engineers, but the entire group that travels to the race track so they can see what will change now we have cars equipped with KERS. There will be times when we can behave exactly as previously, but in other situations we will restrict access to garage areas, if for example we are charging batteries or going through other procedures that require extra care. Some team members will have to wear and use special equipment and we have also been evaluating what effect this has on their normal tasks, such as changes to gloves or shoes. We have tried several iterations to choose the best possible equipment for the guys.

Most emergency scenarios involving KERS are extremely unlikely to happen, but like everything in life, you have to prepare for the worst. We have practised different possible failure scenarios so that everyone knows what to do, just as we have always done in pit stop practice.

From Toro Rosso’s blog