A rainy Sunday at Monza in 2008 was the setting for Toro
Rosso’s finest hour at the hands of now triple World Champion Sebastian Vettel.
Following his promotion to Red Bull for
the 2009 season, sister team Toro Rosso have spent the time since, building castles
in the air in a bid to recapture those heady heights.
The 2012 season saw Toro Rosso trailing peers in the development
fight, displaying performance figures superior only to the ‘new’ teams; a story
reflected in their race pace as their updates were not sizeable enough to match
competitors. Suffering from the
restriction on exhaust blown diffusers for the 2012 season, technology that
Toro Rosso had mastered successfully, the STR7 spent the season on the tails of
the majority of the opposition. The only
car to feature extensively undercut sidepods, the STR7 struggled to produce
adequate downforce for effective racing at most circuits.
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| 2012 car: STR7 |
The pace of the drivers mirrored that of the performance and
pace of the car. In 2013, Daniel
Ricciardo and Jean Eric Vergne will be looking to prove their worth. Having been given a grace period due to their
relative lack of experience, this season will be the year they will be expected
to make a significant impact, and will need to deliver results for fear of
attracting the wrath of Helmut Marko. The
faith of both immersed in what lay beneath the shroud, as they stepped up to
unveil the STR8 on the eve of the first test in Jerez.
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| Team mates under pressure. Can the STR8 deliver? |
The hopes and aspirations for a successful 2013 and
ascension up the Championship table lay beneath a car shaped vision
representing cloaked dreams. On removal
of the cloak, eyes were initially drawn to the use of a full vanity panel
giving the Toro Rosso 2013 challenger an instantly beautiful line from the nose
up to the cockpit. Moving across to the
sidepods, which have a gently sloping gradient giving more of a curve than was
evident on the STR7. The heavily
undercut feature of the sidepods on last year’s car is maintained, as is the
push rod front suspension and the Semi Coanda exhaust system.
Will the appointment of James Key, who led the design team
responsible for the successful Sauber C31 in 2012, have proved to have
fortified the aero department at Toro Rosso guiding them back on the quest for
technical stability? Considering they
were significantly behind most competitors in terms of development last year,
are there enough changes on the STR8 to catch the rest of the field. Will this be the year they stop chasing
rainbows and reach the pot of gold?
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