Toro Rosso F1 team points total 'pathetic', according to James Key

The team lies seventh in the constructors' championship after 11 races, but is 80 points adrift of sixth-placed McLaren.

Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniil Kvyat have been regular Q3 contenders in the STR9, but have only scored 17 points between them thanks to a spate of reliability issues.

Both Key and team principal Franz Tost have reiterated to their squad that STR's finishing rate has not been good enough.

"I think it's been a real mixed bag for us because we've got a really pathetic handful of points out of what should have been a much better position at this stage given that fundamentally we've got into Q3 on almost every occasion," Key told AUTOSPORT.

"All the issues have been completely different, which has been the big frustration.

"One area of weakness that you can focus on and get fixed quickly is great, [but] when you have a real random scattering of stuff you've never seen before, and it catches you out and then disappears again, it's really tough.

"Some of it definitely has been of our own making, but other issues have just been unfortunate."

Tost added: "We did not finish eight times and this is simply not good enough."

"I think we have suffered from not doing a proper winter testing programme, because we are still observing new issues on the car which normally you sort out after testing.

"But we had a lot of problems during these sessions, and as a result we simply couldn't find out the weak points on the car during this very important preparation period."

RESOLVING A CRISIS

Key called a crisis meeting after June's Austrian Grand Prix and said STR had since put contingencies in place to address its issues.

"We had some pretty clear procedures in place anyway, so some of it was just reinforcing that we need to make sure those procedures were adhered to," Key told AUTOSPORT.

"Some of it has been procedural changes, and a very clear message that we must be extremely thorough on everything, even if it seems like it's rock solid you never know given the random nature of all this stuff.

"The guys have responded extremely well to that and they've been extra conscientious with every bit of design work that's been done."

Key said Toro Rosso had also backed off on developing the STR9 too aggressively, to avoid potentially introducing new problems.

"We've been pushing probably the hardest the team has ever pushed, and our development rate has been quite reasonable," Key added.

"But when you're pushing a relatively small team to that level, inevitably mistakes can be made, or not everything is covered quite in the detail you'd want.

"So we've actually said: 'right, hang on, let's just step back and make sure that the fundamentals are right'."