Bullseye

The Red Bull second team has once again hit the mark with a first class chassis – Racecar puts Toro Rosso’s innovative STR12 under the microscope

- Sam Collins

Scuderia Toro Rosso was founded in late 2005 after Red Bull acquired the tiny cash-strapped Minardi Formula 1 team from Paul Stoddart. The primary aim of the re-named outfit from that point on was to develop young drivers for the main Red Bull Racing team and, as such, from its foundation until the 2010 season the team relied on modified Red Bull Racing chassis.

However, in 2010 the practice of using customer chassis was banned and the team had to develop its own designs from scratch. Yet despite the focus of the team remaining on driver development, it has since then gained a reputation for creating innovative designs over the last seven seasons, especially under the leadership of James Key – who has been technical director at Toro Rosso since 2012. The team’s 2017 car, the Toro Rosso STR12, does nothing but add to this reputation.

The STR12 made its track debut during a private test in Italy shortly before making its public debut in Barcelona ahead of pre-season testing. When the covers came off the new design it was clear that the Toro Rosso team had identified the same general car concept as Mercedes (which had launched its 2017 model a few days earlier), leading many in the motorsport press to claim that the STR12 was simply a ‘blue Mercedes’ or that it was at the very least ‘Mercedes-inspired’. This is something that clearly grates with Key.

‘Because we launched our car after Mercedes everyone assumed that we had copied them, though I’m sure if the launches had been in the reverse order they would probably still say the same,’ Key says. ‘We were kind of sad that we were not the only people to come up with some of the different things on the car.’

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