Tech analysis: Scuderia Toro Rosso STR01

To those who have been involved in Formula One for many years, this is a new team rather than the Minardi team that were both loved and hated for their low budget approach to F1. Red Bull purchased the struggling Minardi team from Paul Stoddart and have made moves for the team to be the Red Bull "junior" team.

So far, the old Minardi chassis has been dropped for a "new" car driven by the young Red Bull drivers and managed out of the old Minardi base in Faenza, Italy. Longer term, the two Red Bull owned teams are expected to share a common facility in England, although they will have their own design teams.

With the decision to drop the Minardi chassis, Scuderia Toro Rosso have been running a Red Bull RB1 chassis. This made sense for two reasons: the team had access to a car for which they had all the data and a known level of performance. Plus, the team had inherited the Cosworth V10 engine supply.

However, the team still needed to build their own car in the short space of time allowed by the late purchase of Minardi. Currently the rules demand that the teams own the intellectual property of their car. This is a grey area, as most spectators understand this to mean the team must design and make their own car. As with any rule, however, it can be interpreted in different ways.

With so much of the car resembling the RB1 it's difficult to spot the changes © LAT (click image to enlarge)

Toro Rosso's approach has been aided by how Red Bull and Jaguar before them made their car. Neither team designed and made the entire car. Large parts and assemblies were farmed out the third parties, contracted to design and make the parts. Under the rules, this means the teams own the intellectual property of the designs. Thus, it could be said that the Red Bull RB1 was a kit car, built from bits from other sources, contractors doing a lot of the work under direction from Red Bull.

Fortunately Red Bull's British base places them in an area full of specialist contractors, many run and staffed by ex-F1 designers and engineers.

Under this set-up, Toro Rosso now own the intellectual property and have assigned contractors to make the parts. As long as no parts come from Red Bull's parts bin, then the new car will be legal.

This is why the new car appears to be a revised RB1; the central core of the car is made up for the team, leaving them to run a development programme to update the car with new parts.

With so much of the car being a facsimile of the RB1 and retaining the same engine, it is better to focus on what's changed.

Visual changes are mainly in the sidepods and the engine cover, plus the engine air inlet was revised for the restrictor that is needed to run on the V10. Under the skin, changes would have had to be made to suit the tyre change regulations, revised crash tests, and the differing power delivery of the restricted V10.

As with the rest of the field, the sidepod fronts are now lightly undercut, the shape necessitating a large bulge workaround side impact spar at floor level, again suggesting the car's roots are in the RB1.

Undercut sidepods are the main visual change to the RB2 © LAT (click image to enlarge)

The rest of the sidepods follow the RB1 shape, although the fairings around the gearbox have been revised to expose the top half of the pipe. Also changed is the shape of the engine cover, which has a different undercut at the tail of the cover.

With the car having to be fitted with both a restrictor plate and a rev limiter, the former requires a change to the roll structure area. The test car appeared with a simple blanking plate with a removable restrictor bolted to the middle, but the larger snorkel required by the unrestricted V10 made the design less efficient in restricted form. So the snorkel area has now been revised with a smaller and more rounded inlet, leaving less space around the restrictor.

Along with the car's design heritage, the restricted V10 has also caused concern around the pitlane. As the V8 rules were defined when Paul Stoddart was still running the team, there was a concession to allow teams without the financial ability to pay for a V8 engine supply to run a V10 engine with an air and rev restriction.

Toro Rosso inherited this engine supply and have been allowed run it in 2006. However, the spirit of the rule was to help cash-strapped Minardi, no one feared them with a slight engine advantage, which is not the case now, with the better resourced Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso.

The restriction was agreed on at the Technical Working Group, which mandated a flat-plate air restrictor of 77mm diameter allied to a rev limit of 16,700rpm. Nonetheless, many people believe that despite the restriction the engine will have an advantage at some tracks, believing the restriction will allow a good torque curve compared to the V8 engines, providing advantages in acceleration and at the start.

The snorkel has had to change to suit the restrictor plate © LAT (click image to enlarge)

According to Cosworth, the sharp-edged restrictor produces losses not only at peak revs but all the way along the power curve due to the way the air is disrupted through the plate.

Due to this, Cosworth believe the equivalence is more accurate than the restrictor affecting only higher revs as some believe. In fairness, their V8 engine has proven to be very strong power wise in testing and it is this engine they have been using to compare with the restricted V10.

Cosworth believe the engines should be comparable to the V8 in terms of power delivery and peak power. If some teams have a weaker v8 than Cosworth then they might be struggling against their restricted V10 as well.

The FIA has maintained that should the V10 prove to hold an advantage, then it can be further restricted with smaller restrictor plates and/or lower rev limits. Should Toro Rosso prove to be too competitive, then protests and action from the FIA could be forthcoming.