Scuderia Toro Rosso - 2011 Preview

2010 was a mixed year for the Red Bull F1 organisation. While the main team achieved all success possible, its sister team Toro Rosso had a disappointing season. No doubt part of this can be attributed to the fact that 2010 was the first year Toro Rosso has had to construct its own car from scratch, rather than simply getting a customer car from Red Bull. While the STR5 was clearly influenced by the Red Bull chassis, there is a significant difference between being given a customer chassis, and looking at last years car and thinking "we've gotta build that?".

There were promising signs from Toro Rosso though. Their young drivers in Buemi and Alguersuari continued to show talent and another year of Formula 1 experience will mean they're much improved for 2011. Also the reliability of the STR5 can not be underestimated. In their first year constructing a chassis in-house, they only had 3 mechanical retirements from the two cars combined. That is a phonomoneal effort and you can only think they'll maintain it in 2011, and with so many cars vying for points reliability between 6th in the Constructors Championship, or 9th.

For 2011 you'd be fairly confident Toro Rosso are going to move back up the standings. With a years worth of experience in building and developing their own chassis under their belt, you feel they'll be much more on the ball in 2011 as last year was probably a learning experience as much as it was a season in itself. Plus the continued partnership of the drivers can only be a benefit, as it means the feed back to and from the team is consistent and everyone knows what to expect. Plus as they're so young, you feel this area can only improve, as well as their driving ability.

Ultimately in 2011 Toro Ross will be hoping to be ahead of Sauber for most, if not all, of the season. They'll probably want to be fighting it out with Williams and Force India in the midfield battle, and not be embroiled with the new teams too often. Those are probably realistic aims too as with improvement in the chassis with more experience, similar standards of reliability and development of the drivers, Toro Rosso could be another piece to add to the battle in the middle of the pack.