It's well known that Red Bull has poured in a huge investment into its namesake F1 outfit but the finances of its sister team Toro Rosso have been shrouded in more secrecy due to the difficulties in obtaining its Italian accounts. Until now.

Pitpass contributors Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid have tracked down Toro Rosso's documents and revealed all in a report for the London Evening Standard. The results show that Red Bull's investment in Toro Rosso is beginning to pay off and they also show just how close to the seat of his pants the team's former owner, aviation entrepreneur Paul Stoddart, was flying.

The team, then known as Minardi, turned a £17 million pre-tax loss in 2005 into a £150,000 profit in 2006 - its first year under its new owners, Red Bull and former F1 driver Gerhard Berger. Its revenues for 2005 under Stoddart came to a trifling £15 million but trebled the following year. Its accounts show that, under Stoddart, the team never made a profit since he bought it in 2001. What made his achievement remarkable was that he managed to keep it going.

In 2001 the team had £6.4 million of loans and this peaked at £10.7 million two years later. It made a £3 million loss that year and staff numbers had risen from 140 in 2001 to 173 in 2003. But as F1's costs accelerated Stoddart had to scale back and staff numbers had slipped to 98 in 2005. The team now has 121 employees with their pay amounting to £7.8 million - a 50% increase on the previous year but still a drop in the ocean compared to the big boys of F1.

Renault and McLaren have over three times the revenues of Toro Rosso and employ over 500 staff each. "You need to find budget, you need to build up resources, you need all of those things but at the end of the day you are just as good as your people are," says Berger. He adds that 50% of the Minardi people are still there and 50% are new people. Building this up has not been as smooth as one might expect. "It's not easy coming from a Minardi environment to show people that you are going to have success," explains Berger but this is gradually getting easier.

"We have got the first reasonably good group of people together and I think they did a great job considering the resources they had, from the facilities they had, from where they are coming from," he says.

Last year the team finished in seventh, equalling Minardi's highest ever finish in the World Championship standings. And if early performance is anything to go by, Sebastian Vettel could propel the team even higher this year.