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The Scuderia Toro Rosso STR01 © LAT (click image to enlarge) |
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.
