FEBRUARY 9, 2006

The new Toro Rosso STR01

The new Toro Rosso STR01 ran for the first time this morning in Jerez, altough the car will not be officially launched until the days running up to the Bahrain Grand Prix. The new car looks very like the Red Bull RB1 although there has been some fairly obvious aerodynamic development work on the sidepods in particular. The car is going to run this year with a rev-limited version of the Cosworth V10 engine and there is already plenty of controversy over this and the fact that the team has been testing with the RB1 chassis. The rules state that cars must be designed and built by teams independently of one another but this does not mean that one team cannot use another team's car as a basis for a design. No doubt the FIA has checked the new car to make sure that it is not too closely related to the RB1.