- Toro Rosso
Toro Rosso aims for breakthrough year with lofty target
Toro Rosso believes it now has the team in place to become a major player in Formula One and has targeted fifth place in the constructors' championship.
Last year the team finished seventh in the standings, but was a long way adrift of Force India in sixth and has never finished higher than sixth (in 2008 when Sebastian Vettel won the Italian Grand Prix at the team). On the face of it, fifth place seems like a very ambitious target, but team principal Franz Tost says the team has been building up to the position it is in now ever since it stopped running a second-hand chassis from Red Bull and is now capable of being a competitive team in its own right.
"The target is quite clear, we have to finish in fifth place in the constructors' championship," Tost said. "That means that the drivers must be permanently in the points.
"We are building up quite a good infrastructure in Faenza and it's a little bit historically related because when the FIA changed the regulations [to ban customer cars] we had to design and build the car ourselves and we had to build up the infrastructure. This took a couple of years and we will be finished with the building at the end of this year, but the building is one side and the other side is the team.
"In the last two or three years we have built up quite a strong technical team under James [Key, technical director] and it's changed from last year to this year making a big jump forward. With the package we have got together now, from the car side, from the driver side and from the financial side, we must be in the position to fight for fifth place in the constructors' championship and this is our target. We have to put in the effort from the team side, the driver side and the technical side, but I am convinced we can achieve it."
To finish fifth, Toro Rosso would have to beat one of the works engine teams or the Williams, which finished third in the standings last year. But Key thinks that the team made big progress last season under his first year as technical director, even if it struggled to convert that into points at times.
"There's nothing wrong with a bit of ambition, we don't want to be seventh," Key said. "As Franz says, we have been working on this, and although there are no guarantees, you have to set yourself some high targets. When you think about that kind of target, of course you recognise that you've got to go and compete against people that have won world championships in the past and have very high expectations. Toro Rosso haven't won the championship, so we have to build up to that and that's what we have been doing with the infrastructure and the team.
"I think we are, from personal experience, in a position where we are much more comfortable with what we can achieve. Last year we were distant in points but we weren't that distant in performance, we just didn't make the most of it."
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