Constructors

Scuderia Toro Rosso

Red Bull's increased interest in Formula 1 in 2005 led to the decision to buy the Minardi team in order to use the team to train up young drivers for Red Bull Racing. The deal was completed in the autumn of 2005 and Austrian Franz Tost was hired from BMW Motorsport to be the team's operational chief. The team signed up Tonio Liuzzi, Scott Speed and Neel Jani for 2006 and announced that it would be running Cosworth V10 engines.

The results were not much better than what had been achieved by Minardi but the team made plans for a better future by taking over the contract for Ferrari engines from its sister team Red Bull. The 2007 season was largely disappointing with Tonio Liuzzi and Scott Speed making little impact. Speed left the team after the European GP and was replaced by BMW Sauber test driver Sebastian Vettel. Vettel caused a crash in Japan with Red Bull's Mark Webber while under safety car conditions and in heavy rain, at a time when they were running third and second respectively. Vettel made up for this by giving the team its best result up till then: fourth in China.