Are Toro Rosso the Team to Watch for the 2016 Formula 1 Season?
Toro Rosso memorably scored their first Formula One victory at the Italian Grand Prix in September 2008 and then finished the season 10 points ahead of their parent team, Red Bull (the first and only time that has happened).
At the end of the year, Sebastian Vettel—the victorious driver on that rainy autumn day—was promoted to Red Bull and promptly repeated his feat, taking the Bulls' first-ever win at the Chinese Grand Prix in April 2009.
Of course, Vettel went on to win four straight championships with the big team, while Red Bull's junior outfit has continued developing drivers with the team firmly entrenched in the midfield.
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But after a chaotic season for Red Bull, is the little Italian team that could (remember, they started life as the lovable losers, Minardi) ready to once again beat the Bulls from Milton Keynes? One notable person thinks it's possible: Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey.
"I think it is going to be an extremely difficult season for us frankly," said Newey recently, according to Motorsport.com's Jonathan Noble. "If we start the engine with the same power as we have had throughout 2014 and 2015, which I think may well be the case, then we are going to be even further behind."
Red Bull infamously slunk back to their previous engine partner, Renault, after spending much of the year criticising the French company and then openly courting Ferrari, Mercedes and even Volkswagen. Toro Rosso, meanwhile, will use year-old Ferrari engines in 2016, rekindling the partnership that won the 2008 race at Monza.
Newey told Motorsport.com that Honda should improve significantly over the winter, but also that, "Toro Rosso, our sister team by having a 2015 Ferrari, will be considerably ahead of this year's Renault power unit."
After their four titles, Red Bull fell to second in the constructors' championship in 2014 and then fourth this year. If Toro Rosso do end up with a stronger engine in 2016, the Bulls' spiral could continue.
Toro Rosso's 2015 chassis, the STR10, was one of the best on the grid. Rookie driver Max Verstappen figured it was second-best, behind only Mercedes, per Autosport's Edd Straw. However, the car was held back by a underpowered, unreliable engine.
Combined, Verstappen and his team-mate, Carlos Sainz Jr., used 15 internal combustion engines (ICEs) last season—one of the six elements of the hybrid power units, of which each driver was allowed four before receiving grid penalties. Only the McLaren and Red Bull drivers used more ICEs than Toro Rosso's, and the Ferrari drivers used 11.
In addition to the grid penalties and frequent retirements, once the STR10 was actually racing, the BBC's Andrew Benson estimated in September that the Renault power unit produced up to 70 bhp less than Mercedes' PU106B Hybrid. Ferrari was 40 to 60 bhp ahead of Renault, with Honda trailing the other three manufacturers.
Those numbers are what have Newey worried. Even an updated Renault power unit may not be able to make up a 40 bhp gap to the 2015 Ferrari engine. If Toro Rosso already have a better chassis than Red Bull (the 2016 cars will be an evolution of the 2015 designs, as major rule changes do not take effect until 2017) and they add a more powerful and reliable engine, well, it doesn't take an aerospace engineer to predict the result.
In terms of competing with the other midfield teams, Toro Rosso beat Sauber handily last year and finished just 11 points behind Lotus (who are regressing in the engine department, going from Mercedes back to Renault after the French company bought the team).
If Toro Rosso can stay ahead of the teams they beat in 2015 and catch Lotus and Red Bull as well, the fifth place that team principal Franz Tost targeted last season is within reach.
The only downside to Toro Rosso's switch to Ferrari engines is that it happened so late in the season. F1 teams begin designing their next cars almost as soon as their current ones hit the track, so the STR11 would have been nearing completion when the decision to partner with Ferrari was made.
Tost admitted as much in the team press release announcing the Ferrari partnership, saying, "It's true that time will be very tight for us to be ready for the first test, but we have the right team of people for this and I'm confident that together we will achieve a competitive package for next year."
It is not an exact comparison, but from 2014 to 2015, Lotus changed from Renault to Mercedes engines. In 2014, the team scored 10 points and finished eighth in the constructors' championship. This year, they scored 78 points—including a podium for Romain Grosjean in Belgium—on their way to a sixth-place finish.
Toro Rosso's improvement will not be as dramatic. The Mercedes power unit is stronger than Ferrari's, as we have seen, and Lotus uses the current Merc engine, while Toro Rosso are getting year-old Ferraris. Still, Lotus is a good example of the improvement that is possible from ditching the much-maligned Renault hybrid V6.
Ferrari powered the Italian Bulls to their best-ever finish in that 2008 season. Now, with the two companies reunited, can a return to the glory days—short-lived as they were—be far behind?
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