Toro Rosso to focus on Monaco upgrades

Apparently we are ’enjoying’ a bit of a break before the season resumes in Turkey, but if you happen to stroll around the corridors of our Faenza factory, you’ll find everyone working flat out. However, it’s true there has been a slight pause for breath after the hectic times of the first three flyaways, so we asked our Chief Engineer, Laurent Mekies to sum up the opening trio of Grands Prix.

“From a Toro Rosso point of view, we discovered more or less what we had expected after the winter testing when the car proved to be well born,” began the Frenchman. “At the first race, we found we had a reasonable race pace and our direct competition came, as expected from Williams, Force India and Sauber and we found ourselves fighting these guys throughout the opening three races of the championship. Our STR6 appeared to have the potential to fight them, which was good news. Qualifying went well in all three races, converting that into points in Melbourne, but not in the next two rounds, but I think that from a performance level, we were right there at all three races. However, it is part of the game that in some races you manage to put everything together properly and in others you do not: this happened to us, it can also happen to our opponents and this explains our position, just trailing a few points behind Sauber in the table. We are going to have an interesting fight with these three or four teams all season long – if you like, this is our championship battle within the championship.”

Looking at the bigger picture rather than just the Scuderia Toro Rosso angle, Laurent has enjoyed the spectacle that new tyres and new rules have produced. “From the point of view of the show and what the spectators actually see, what is happening at the moment is simply fantastic,” he enthuses. “In the past, we had some races where it was a bit predictable, with most cars making just the single compulsory pit stop all at around the same time within a couple of laps of one another. Now, in Malaysia for example we saw two stoppers, three stoppers and even four stoppers and no one could have dreamed of a better combination than that from the spectacle point of view. Those stops are necessary because there is a large drop in tyre performance which is good for the show. On top of that, it is throwing up different strategies, creating the need for multiple pit stops, but above all, it also produces a lot of overtaking situations, because there is now a big difference in lap time between a guy on fresh rubber and another on worn tyres. All this adds spice to the race. Maybe the only limitation is that, even if it is very enjoyable and interesting for those of us on the pit wall and when you look back at the race a couple of days later, I admit that maybe, watching it live during the race itself, it can be difficult to read the race, as was the case in Malaysia, while China was more straightforward and enjoyable for everybody.”

Development of the car is the key to how we continue to fight to move up the order and apparently that work can now take place on two different levels. “We have planned major steps for car development during the year that have been established since before the start of the season,” explains Laurent. “At some point pre-season, you have to sign off the car to go into production to be built and maybe you have a good idea for a component the next day, so these are the building blocks for your next development update. This has indeed been the case with us and we will see a significant step introduced in Monaco and another one later in the season. These two steps are planned and will hopefully provide good performance improvements, however, it is also true that with minimal testing allowed, we have been trying different set-ups at the races and these can lead you down different paths in terms of ride height, or the type of springs to use, or in terms of the aero balance on the car and these elements can also impact on the development strategy for the car.”