Twenty two days is pretty good going says STR

There was an opinion shared by some of the media at the Toro Rosso new car launch on Monday that the STR4 was rather late in getting to the track. The team’s technical director, Giorgio Ascanelli was therefore very keen to set them right.

“I am happy that we have made our debut just 22 days later than Red Bull Racing first ran their new car. This compares very favorably to last year when we were at least 70 days behind Red Bull Racing, which shows we have made progress."

Twenty two days is pretty good going, when two factors are taken into account; the team’s use of more outside suppliers, as Toro Rosso does not yet have the manpower and production capacity of its sister team and the fact that the car designs from Red Bull Technology are originally based around a different engine to the Ferrari 056 that the Faenza cars use.

“With a drawing office staffed by around a dozen people and tackling the additional workload that comes with the KERS system, adapting a chassis that was originally designed to suit a different engine than the one we use, is actually quite a lot of work," explained Ascanelli.

“However, it is no different to what we did last year, except in the additional arrival of the KERS system. Packaging is the most fundamental aspect of what we do in the car drawing office, but it was a tough and interesting task adapting our chassis to our needs."

As for the first day of track work at Barcelona with STR4, Ascanelli was cautious yet positive…

“Our first day, with 86 laps is quite satisfying, working through all the usual system checks while trying to get as high a mileage as possible under our belts. Don’t expect me to make any comments about our performance just yet, as it’s far too early."