How similar is the Toro Rosso to Mercedes?

Out of the cars in the big battle from fourth onwards, the Toro Rosso looks like a good candidate to be in the thick of the fight.

Of course, that depends partly on what's under the engine cover, because although Renault is delighted with the progress it has made, the question is if it has achieved enough compared to Mercedes and Ferrari.

Toro Rosso is one of the smaller teams, but looking at the team's enthusiasm at its launch on the eve of 2017 testing, everyone there is confident they are going somewhere. A look at the car and knowing Toro Rosso has a good technical director in James Key justifies that confidence.

NOSE

It's nice to see something slightly different, and the Toro Rosso nose is much more like the Mercedes approach than the rest.

The Mercedes nose has a thinner section horizontally, but the effect overall is similar in that the airflow is not confused as much as it could be with the more complex designs chosen by other teams. With this simpler approach there is a better chance it will do what you want, and do it consistently.

Those with the thumb print design and two wing pillars that are adapted to channel the airflow are fairly complicated, but the more complicated it is the more complicated it needs to be to work correctly.

FRONT WING

The front wing design follows what Red Bull has been doing for a while. The outboard end has seven elements with six slot gaps and is basically trying to maximise the amount of downforce you can get while still turning the airflow to allow a good, decent, tidy airflow between the two front wheels.

FRONT SUSPENSION

Toro Rosso has raised the front suspension, and also raised the outboard end of the top wishbone, which is mounted outside of the wheel, similar to what we've seen from Mercedes.

So rather than just angling the wishbones to meet up with the chassis, Toro Rosso has been able to raise the outboard end, which in turn will give more efficient suspension geometry and make better use of the tyre contact patch.

The detrimental side is that the loads in the wishbones are increased, so the parts have to be stronger and therefore heavier in order to get the required stiffness. But you can still get good front suspension geometry and have the wishbones picking up the wake off the front wing to realign it for better delivery to the sidepods.

It doesn't hurt the front wing's workings, and it will make the downforce at the rear of the car better. With so many compromises often made for aero, it is good to see teams thinking more about the suspension geometry in this case.

In terms of the similarities to the Mercedes, although the nose and suspension detail is very similar to the W08, it doesn't go much further back than that.

The detail on the Mercedes is absolutely mind-blowing. So don't expect Toro Rosso to join the top three and challenge Mercedes for the title, even if we can keep wishing.

SIDEPODS

The sidepods have a pronounced undercut and quite a big bargeboard. There's nothing quite as exciting as we've seen from Ferrari here, but all of the fundamentals are there.

The bargeboard itself, if working correctly, accommodates a huge amount of airflow change to turn it around the sidepod. That can make a huge difference to overall downforce.

The outboard vertical turning vane is a two-element component. It's there to tidy up the wake behind the front tyre, and is separate from the horizontal turning vane on the top of the sidepod.

The vertical ones are there to tidy up the airflow and send it down through the Coke bottle area. But the other one is there to counteract the lift created at the leading edge of the top surface of the sidepod.

Toro Rosso has the maximum open airflow to get the sidepods and the bargeboards working well by keeping things relatively simple at the front of the car. If something isn't working as well on the circuit as the windtunnel tells the team, there's a chance Toro Rosso could work out why and find a solution quite quickly.

If the Ferrari has a problem, I'm not convinced it would be so easy with so many complicated parts.

The leading edge of the sidepod has got quite a large undercut. You can more or less see the lines of the radiators as the sidepod drops off into the Coke bottle area.

The rear of the car has this big low pressure area behind it being pulled along. What you want to do is get that low pressure area to pull on the rest of the car to speed up the airflow so the Coke bottle and the undercut connects up to the front wing.

HEADREST AREA

The headrest is designed to calm the turbulence coming off the driver's helmet. Looking at the airbox intake, it's divided into three - the central part to feed the engine and the other two for cooling.

This area is not as critical as it was in the days of normally-aspirated engines, as the turbo takes what air it needs.

The undercut is to separate the driver's helmet from the airflow that spills onto the engine cover surface.

ENGINE COVER

The engine cover is the minimum cross section needed to contain all the components underneath it and it then merges into the engine cover fin.

At least there's a place for the tail of the Red Bull in the livery, so that's about the only good thing I can say about that! Maybe the trailing edge should have matched the shape of the bull?

The sooner these bits get cut off with a jigsaw, the better. But that's unlikely to happen because of a lack of people taking decisions.

REAR SUSPENSION

This is a pullrod design. The dampers are mounted right at the front of the gearbox, or even on the back of the engine. The reason they are mounted there is because of the stiffness, so the pullrod leans forward to reach that.

The actuation of the inboard rocker system will be at the same angle and on the same plane as the pullrod. So you get the stiffness free of charge with nothing detrimental.

REAR WING

The rear wing assembly is like most others seen so far in 2017. It's supported in the middle with a carbonfibre beam off the top of the gearbox around the exhaust.

The exhaust has a single exit and the two wastegate exhausts, while STR retains the saddle wing that wraps around the exhaust.

This doesn't create much downforce, but it helps to connect the airflow regimes of the diffuser and rear wing to make them work as one.

At some circuits it works well, at others it's a bit draggy.

Unfortunately, the diffuser was blanked off, but we'll see that once the car is on track.