Toro Rosso eye fifth place with “best ever car”

2015 F1 season

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Toro Rosso will head into their tenth season in Formula 1 with the team’s “best car ever built”, according to Team Principal Franz Tost.

After finishing seventh in 2014, the team are aiming to move futher up the midfield this year by taking fifth place in the Constructor’s Championship.

Unveiling the STR10 for the first time today in Jerez, Franz Tost had plenty of praise for his team’s new car, as well as their two rookie drivers.

“I am convinced that this will be the best car we have ever built at Toro Rosso so far,” said Tost.

“The team around our Techincal Director, James Key, have really put in a lot of time and effort on finding solutions for the new design. As you can see, the car looks very clean and, for me, if a car looks clean and beautiful, it is often fast.”

Despite the team fielding the youngest ever driver partnership in the sport’s history, Tost is expecting both Carlos Sainz Jr and Max Verstappen to be able to deliver strong performances throughout the season.

“The aim is to finish fifth place in the constructor’s Championship and this means the drivers must be permanantly in the points,” says Tost.

“Our driver line-up is the youngest in Formula 1 history, but this is no reason to set us back or think we can’t achieve our goals. Young drivers are always hungry for success and we will make sure we use this positively to our advantage.”

The team are also looking forward to what they hope will be a stronger performance from their Renault engine this season.

“Renault have done a really good job over the winter and now we have the complete package,” says Tost. “So I’m really convinced we will be very competitive.”

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Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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14 comments on “Toro Rosso eye fifth place with “best ever car””

  1. 5th place? So behind Red Bull, Mercedes, Williams for sure, and then they think ahead of either Ferrari or McLaren? Is the Ferrari spokesman now an employee of Toro Rosso?

    1. He’s obviously overly optimistic, close to unrealistic. But kudos for having ambition. In my mind though, even if the car was up for it, it’s not going to happen this year with their driver lineup. Now don’t get me wrong, Verstappen and Sainz are very talanted for sure, but as a team they are not going to beat Alonso+Button, or Vettel+Raikkonen just yet. Although i’m more certain about Mclaren than Ferrari, but that’s another story :)

      1. ColdFly F1 (@)
        31st January 2015, 22:58

        That would certainly be the story of 2015: 2 rookies beating 2 ex WDC’s.

    2. Ahead of McLaren isn´t unrealistic, I guess.

      1. I’d say that the McLaren looks more promising than the Ferrari to my eyes, the front wing and packaging looks far more sorted on the MP4-30. If this is true, it’s incredible how much Ferrari under achieve, everything being done under the same roof and having had an extra year to sort issues out.

    3. OmarR-Pepper (@)
      1st February 2015, 1:24

      @xtwl if Williams doesn’t plummet again, as they usually do every other year. That way, 5th is not so unrealistic.

    4. I wouldn’t be surprised to see STR in front of either McLaren or Ferrari, I would however doubt seriously that STR is the one Renault team to get amongst the Merc teams.

  2. If they are targeting 5th, then they know something about their budget that we don’t (that, or they have piggybacked a lot off of Red Bull once more..). They might be able to take it to Lotus and maybe Williams if all goes well. But we’ll see how quickly the drivers get up to speed in the races.

    1. @fastiety Williams? That’s a bold statement, but who knows?

      1. @spoutnik True, on their 2014 form. I’m just guessing that with bigger budgets and works engines, that McLaren and Ferrari should surpass them, with Lotus being close with a similar engine. But most of that probably won’t happen just yet… 7th for Toro Rosso in a battle with Force India it is..

  3. Be realistic like BMW Sauber said first year points in every race. Second years podiums third year wins fourth year title. These days say. To make both cars to Q3 or in there case to the finish to be honest. STR lost a lot of points due to unreliability last year. They should build on that.

  4. Red Bull with two Strategy Group votes fills me with dread.

    1. Indeed. A reason to always hope they never make it past 6th.

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