The Weekly Grapevine

What next for Toro Rosso?

This year was supposed to herald the return of the customer car, a phenomenon once prevalent in Formula One, but banned at about the time the category began its march to real sporting prominence.

As has been well documented, both here and elsewhere, the regulations permitting teams to race bought-in chassis was amended after robust legal threats from two independents building their own chassis - Williams and Force India (nee Spyker, formerly Midland, originally Jordan, under which guise the team first threatened arbitration, proving how the saga has dragged). The rules now require teams entering the world championship from 2010 onwards to wholly own the intellectual rights to their chassis.

The first casualty was Prodrive, whose F1 project was immediately aborted, followed shortly by Super Aguri, whose business model, and thus their very existence, relied on buying in hand-me-down kit and going racing at a fraction of the costs facing a fully-fledged Formula One team.

David Richards © LAT

Once Aguri fell, there was a real and present danger that the other team relying on a similar (although not identical) model, namely Scuderia Toro Rosso, would also fold or be sold, if not this year, then certainly before end-2009.

First, some brief history about STR, originally Minardi: the team was acquired by Red Bull's Dietrich Mateschitz, who saw in the FIA's customer car concession an opportunity to spread costs across two operations, with Red Bull Racing acting as main flag bearer and the other developing the most promising of the company's numerous young drivers. (And, with Sebastian Vettel's recent promotion to the main team for 2009, STR's raison d'etre has been vindicated.)

Thus, pushed by various interests operating at varying levels within the sport, in late 2005 the lifestyle drinks magnate struck a deal with Paul Stoddart, the wiry, chain-smoking aviation entrepreneur who had purchased the team from a consortium four years earlier. Mateschitz then immediately offset 50 per cent of his new acquisition, doing a deal with former grand prix winner and ex-BMW motorsport director Gerhard Berger.

Following a concessionary year of running old Minardi chassis powered by rev-limited Ford V10s at a time when the rest were running V8 screamers, STR in 2007 switched to a Ferrari-powered version of Red Bull's new chassis after the main team rather suspiciously went for Renault power.

This year's STR03 is effectively RBR's 04 adapted for Ferrari power - and so good is the Adrian Newey-designed car that it has on more than a few occasions qualified in the top ten on merit, and regularly worries Big Brother...

But, in the process of mutating from Minardi to customer team, the original manufacturing facilities had been neglected and not regularly upgraded, as is the norm - after all, why should money be allocated there when chassis were 'bought in' from Red Bull Technology Ltd? Latterly, the former three-unit base spread over Faenza's industrial sites (near Imola) had been dedicated to car assembly, preparation and race operations.

Behind the scenes, though, serious battles were brewing. On the one hand, Collin Kolles at Force India was persevering with his arbitration action; on the other, the FIA had U-turned on the customer regulation as a result of litigious threats from Williams.

At the same time, Berger was said to be dissatisfied with his end of the deal, as he was required to raise sponsorship to fund what was in effect a Red Bull initiative, while Prodrive saw the writing on the wall and aborted. Through all this, Aguri Suzuki's speed dialler was being updated through the addition of ever more liquidator contact details...

Ultimate F3 boss Barry Walsh has been linked with a buyout © LAT

Then, to crown it all, between this year's Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix, Mateschitz admitted to considering offloading his stake in STR, as owning two F1 teams no longer made sense after the FIA's U-turn. To the Austrian multi-billionaire's credit, though, he did pledge to support the team fully until a purchaser was found.

No buyer, certainly nobody of substance, appeared - signalling that STR could easily go the way of Prodrive and Aguri over effectively the same issue - even if the team's performance meant it was, unlike Aguri, capable of regularly running in the points. So, why was there no discernible interest in buying an up and running team?

The answer is logical: who on earth would consider buying an operation (or a 50 per cent share, assuming Berger stayed on board) when its market value would effectively be zero within two years? And, the longer the seller held out, the faster its intrinsic worth decreased, exponentially.

Thus, if Mateschitz and Berger wished to have a race-able entity - for which read saleable team - by the 2010 opener, they would need to invest in new facilities PDQ in order to be bona fide constructors. Given that Minardi's resources were hardly state-of-the-art five years ago and been largely neglected since, the bottom line was that the owners were faced with two choices: gear up or shut up.

Fortunately for the good folk working in Faenza, the duo chose the former option, and in Budapest STR team principal Franz Tost exclusively revealed that from 2010 the team would be in a position to manufacture and build its own car.

"We need to build up our infrastructure in preparation for 2010 and become constructors according to the definition of the FIA," he said. "For this reason we are recruiting more people and obviously also require more working space."

The Austrian sports management graduate, former Formula Ford champion and ex-BMW motorsport operations manager disclosed that "about 50 additional people would be employed, filling positions in administration through design and manufacture to mechanics", and that the recruiting programme was already well under way. This would bring the team up to around 200 heads, a 33 per cent increase on present levels.

Most of the newcomers would be attracted from within F1, he said, but some would hail from other formulae or even outside the motorsport industry. One high-profile scalp is believed to be Fabio Segalini, designer of the original GP2 chassis and currently a senior engineer at Dallara.

In addition, two additional industrial units in Faenza had been acquired to bring the total number to five, virtually doubling the team's manufacturing space. "We are building up the infrastructure, and hope to have the project completed by end-2009," he said, adding that the entire process had been systematically planned.

Machining capacity, too, would be increased, although Tost stressed that the team maintained good relations with suppliers in the area, and that sub-contracting of certain processes and components would continue. Wind tunnel space would, though, be rented, certainly for the foreseeable future, as it would require, he believed, two to three years to build a suitable facility.

Gerhard Berger and Dietrich Mateschitz © LAT

Although no figures were given, the cost of the entire programme is estimated to be well north of €50 million - approximately half the asking price of Mateschitz's 50 per cent share in March. Undoubtedly, though, this would increase should Mateschitz still wish to sell his holding after the expansion.

Tost would not be drawn on this, saying only: "You will have to ask Mr Mateschitz about that, he may know something about that. For my part, it is business as usual."

Thus, it appears, the threat hanging over STR - and, therefore, the sport's ability to field ten teams for the foreseeable future - has receded, while assuring the future of Italy's second team, one vital, too, to Ferrari's commercial health, for STR was one of its two engine customers.

The timing, too, is perfect. 2009 sees a major regulatory change, after which the sport should experience a period of technical stability, allowing STR to build on whatever technical solutions Newey provides for next year. Plus, by then, the effects of the new aero regulations, the return of slicks and the introduction of KERS will be well known. To have introduced a new car in 2009 under those circumstances would have been tantamount to technical suicide.

Above all, though, Mateschitz's willingness to invest further in the team - even if only to recover some of his investment - bodes well for the sport, particularly in times of tight credit, for investment normally attracts stability, both within a particular team and throughout the sport. And stability is exactly what the sport needs after two years of turmoil.