2010 Scuderia Toro Rosso STR5

2010 is a landmark year for Scuderia Toro Rosso as it detaches itself from Red Bull Technology and, in accordance with new F1 rules, has to do all its own car design and build work in-house.
In recent years, more and more production had been undertaken at the team's Faenza facility, but now we really have to go it alone.




Continuity is important in F1 and we still have Franz Tost at the helm and Giorgio Ascanelli heading the technical operation. With a longer than usual nineteen race season ahead, the team has reached its first target in having the new car ready for the first of the fifteen days of winter testing, which will be the key to ensuring that the car, the team and drivers are as well prepared as possible for the first round in Bahrain.

STR5 is Go
At five past nine on a cool and sunny Monday morning at the Valencia circuit, our 2010 car, the STR 5 was wheeled into pit lane for its first ever photo call in front of around 60 photographers (and being in Spain, an army of Alguersuari fans watching from the pit lane balcony.)



One very interested observer came over from the next door garage – a new driver by the name of Michael Schumacher, accompanied by Mercedes boss, Norbert Haug.

Ascanelli: 'You Can't Buy This Stuff From The Tobacconist'
We managed to drag our technical director away from watching our new baby in the garage, to tackle questions from the media this morning.

Giorgio Ascanelli began by enumerating the factors that had steered the design of this year's car: the need to carry more fuel, run narrower tyres, design a car with the now permitted double diffuser, changes to the cockpit which impinged on the design of the front end of the car, as well as various other detailed changes to the technical regulations. 'The use of the double diffuser led us to look at the design of the gearbox to accommodate it and the need to carry more fuel, inevitably led to a longer car, while we have obviously tried to recover some of that length by looking at the gearbox design,' explained Ascanelli. 'Another change is that the '09 car was designed to accommodate KERS, while this year, all teams have agreed not to run it and that has made our task a little bit easier.'

Although the rules state that every team must design its own car this year, Ascanelli made it clear that Scuderia Toro Rosso was starting from a good base line. 'We were blessed with the fact that last year's design from Red Bull Technology was a bloody good car, but I should make it clear that we did a lot of our own design work last year and that none of the manufacturing was done by Red Bull Technology. We used several outside supplier and, currently, we are increasing the ratio of how much of the car we build ourselves to the number of components we have to outsource.'

Increasing our in-house capacity has required an increase in terms of manpower and equipment. 'We have acquired the former Red Bull Racing wind tunnel in Bicester, (ÚK) employed some rather good people to work there and we have expanded the staff to work on the CFD and calculation tools we have installed in the factory,' he continued. 'We also have increased our manufacturing capacity by acquiring several new machining tools. But these are not things you can go and get off the shelf from the local tobacconist! So, it is a gradual process. As for new staff, finding people is never easy, finding good people is very difficult. Once you find them you have to get them to work together. Everyone is good at something, but it takes time to find out exactly what that is.'

The STR5 has been designed and built to conform to the technical regulations which apply this year.

Although the changes are not as significant as those introduced twelve months ago, they are important enough to have had a major impact on the philosophy of the car.

Possibly the biggest difference stems from the fact that the 2010 car has been designed to make the most of running a double diffuser, whereas in 2009, the car had to be adapted mid-season to make use of this device. Another unusual feature of the new rules is that the introduction of a narrower front tyre was originally conceived as part of a move to facilitate overtaking, in conjunction with the KERS system, which all teams have actually agreed to leave on the shelf this season. Únderstanding how the new tyres work – the rears also feature a different construction – will be one of the main tasks undertaken in February testing.

Also significant in defining the shape of the car is the ban on refuelling, which requires a much larger fuel cell. This has led to STR5 being longer than its predecessor. Scuderia Toro Rosso has undergone a recent and rapid expansion of its design team and its wind tunnel in Bicester is also a relatively new tool. These two factors mean the overall design of STR5 could be seen as conservative, given that getting a new workforce to operate as a team and validating and learning to trust wind tunnel data is not the work of a moment. The extra fuel load has not just impacted on the shape of the car, as the additional weight has meant a reappraisal of the suspension and braking, as well as other areas. For the fourth consecutive year, the Toro is powered by the Cavallino, as we continue to use the Ferrari 056 V8 engine. With engine development strictly limited, winter work on the V8 has focussed on reliability and fuel consumption, the latter particularly significant this year, with the refuelling ban.

Source - Scuderia Toro Rosso