How Toro Rosso gave Renault a major scare

Since the glory days of Sebastian Vettel, Toro Rosso has been a bit-part player in Formula 1.

But in 2019 it had its most successful season since that famous year, matching its 2008 best of sixth in the constructors' championship and twice claiming podium finishes.

The departure of technical director James Key last season ahead of his arrival at McLaren led to a switch in the philosophy of the team.

Jody Egginton took his place, initially as de facto technical director in his role as deputy before picking up the real title, and focused on leaning as much as possible on the kit available from Red Bull.

With a car built around the Red Bull 2018 suspension and gearbox, plus other non-listed parts, there were fewer problems and therefore more mileage this year.

Toro Rosso was therefore able to focus its efforts on aero development. There was a change of philosophy there too, opting for a drip-feed of upgrades rather than large packages, something that had caused problems the year before.

The gap to Renault was a little flattering, but said much about Toro Rosso's superior execution

The pragmatic decision to pursue the unloaded outboard front-wing concept, which appears easier to manage aerodynamically in terms of the wake off the wing and front wheel, led to a car that was all-round a little easier to get the best out of than its predecessor.

Thanks to Honda's improvement, the Toro Rosso flitted between being just inside Q3 and just outside, but it was usually a points threat in the races.

Crucially, it seized its big chances with a podium finish for Daniil Kvyat at Hockenheim after a slick-tyre gamble - backed up by the revelatory Alex Albon's even-better performance on his way to sixth place - and mid-season returnee Pierre Gasly's second place at Interlagos after dominating the midfield fight.

That allowed it to finish just six points behind fifth-placed Renault in the constructors' table. The gap was a little flattering, but said much about Toro Rosso's superior execution.

Renault fails to live up to (its own) expectations

Renault's objective this year was to finish, as team principal Cyril Abiteboul put it over the winter, "a better fourth".

It failed in that objective, finishing well behind McLaren and only just holding off Toro Rosso to retain fifth place in the constructors' championship.

The team did make a step forward in terms of pace, closing by almost 0.25% on the front compared to its average performance last season, but it only headed the midfield four times each in qualifying and the races, and lagged decisively behind McLaren.

"It's not what we hoped for," says Renault executive director Marcin Budkowski.

"It's a combination [of factors]. We started a little bit backward in terms of missing our winter targets, not by a lot but by enough in the midfield to be very much in it rather than just ahead of it. When you have a really, really tight midfield you can swing from P7 to P16 on the grid very easily.

"So we failed to extract ourselves from that midfield during the winter even if we made decent progress on the engine. Reliability issues and a few mistakes meant that we didn't score the points we should have early in the season when we were actually reasonably competitive.

"We haven't developed the car quickly enough; we haven't put much development on since Paul Ricard - we've done a few since in the suspension and a few aero upgrades, but they are fairly minor compared to what we were hoping for."

Renault's peaks make it clear where the weakness was. Its strongest weekend was Monza - Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg finished fourth and fifth - with low-downforce Montreal next up.

Overall aero load was the problem, with the team seemingly struggling to get the best from the potentially better, but harder to manage, loaded outboard front-wing concept.

This contributed to underachieving with the bargeboards, the key performance area under the 2019 rules, and diminishing developmental returns.

How Gasly bounced back

By Scott Mitchell

The focus on Red Bull's season was undeniably its performance with Honda, but a mid-year driver swap cannot be ignored. And no matter how well Alex Albon did in Pierre Gasly's place, Red Bull would rather have never found out how that change would work.

Before the season began, a breakthrough podium finish would have seemed very likely for Gasly, not least because Red Bull and Honda started the season solidly. But it quickly became clear that this would be difficult.

After crashing twice, heavily, in pre-season testing, Gasly's season barely got going. One week into the summer break, after a particularly dismal weekend in Hungary, he was dropped to Toro Rosso, with Albon taking his seat.

But Gasly came out swinging. Any lingering sulkiness on the first day back in the paddock in Belgium quickly evaporated and was replaced by a desire to prove a few people wrong.

And he has done: Gasly scored points in more than half of the races he contested for Toro Rosso this year, including a shock second place in Brazil.

Gasly scoring a podium turned out to be a shock, and is just one of the steps to winning back Red Bull's favour

When Gasly lost his drive at Red Bull, his place on the programme was in jeopardy. It looked near-impossible that he could make himself a legitimate Red Bull candidate again.

Much like his Toro Rosso team-mate Daniil Kvyat - who fills a placeholder role - a lack of immediate alternatives within the Red Bull driver pool probably helped put Gasly in a weird limbo - still in F1, but with no real likelihood of getting the big chance he craved (and lost).

However, the version of Gasly on display in the second half of 2019 is good enough to race for Red Bull again.

A year ago, the podium breakthrough would have felt like a formality and something of a necessity to keep his Red Bull seat. That Gasly scoring a podium turned out to be a shock, and is just one of the steps to winning back Red Bull's favour, tells you all you need to know about his rollercoaster season.