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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.
