As the World Championship reaches half-distance, Toro Rosso follows the example of its sister team, with a half-term report:
Franz Tost: After half a season, we now have a team that has better stability and increased cooperation between the different elements which means the team is getting better all the time, although we are still in a situation where we are recruiting new staff. But this is not a job advertisement! How well the car performs is the result of all the different departments within the team, not just the technical department but the whole organisational structure of the team and down to the detail of how the mechanics build the car. At this point in the season, I can see the people now pay more attention to detail and this is the first step to improving performance and we are working in the right direction.
The rumours regarding the sale of the team, when they grew stronger again earlier this season, did have an effect on us, but only for a short time. If every week there is a story that the team will be sold it is not so funny for the employees. But the message we have from Dietrich Mateschitz is clear, that for 2009, everything will remain stable, not just in terms of employment but also in terms of the budget. Then, from 2010 we will see what happens. At the moment the team is stable. We are pushing hard, taking one step at a time and we have improved our performance.
Our cooperation with Red Bull Technology has always been good even if we are competing with Red Bull Racing and both teams are made up of very competitive racers. I can only say thank you to Red Bull Technology, because the people there around Adrian Newey have done a tremendous job as we can see from this STR3 car. Unfortunately, the new car was a bit late: if it had been finished a month earlier, allowing us more testing time to acquire more data, our performance could be better now.
The drivers have so far performed as I had expected, given that both of them have very little F1 experience. Vettel has pretty much jumped into Formula 1 after a very short racing career. With the current very high level of performance from all the drivers on the grid, you can't just come into this category and show the others how to drive. A young driver needs three years until he understands what F1 is about: it's not just driving the car, he needs to understand the whole environment, the engineering, the marketing, the press and bring all these elements together to build up the complete picture to understand when to do what. On this level I am very happy with both our drivers. Vettel is doing a very good job because we can see his learning curve is increasing and he is getting better and better and I am convinced that in the next few races we will see the results of this. Bourdais had a fantastic start in Melbourne and he has also had some other good races. He too is improving and we can expect to see more good races from him.
Sebastien Bourdais: My season got underway with an average qualifying in Australia and then I had a super race up until two laps from the finish, but despite everything I have fond memories of it and it was a nice debut. After that we struggled a bit with some technical problems and I made some mistakes. We lacked a bit of competitivity until we got the new car. When that came, our potential was much higher but now I need to find what works for me with this car and I'm not quite there yet. But we continue to work hard in the hope that things will take a turn for the better.
It's difficult to quantify how much one relies on one's experience; in my case I don't have that much experience of Formula 1 and the switch to the new car for Monaco did prove a bit problematic for me. Adding to that difficulty was that, very shortly after we ran it for the first time, we then had a new aero package, and with limited knowledge of the base car, this further complicated the situation in terms of understanding the car's behaviour.
Coming from being a front runner in Champ Cars to my current position in F1 has not been hard to deal with. I was not always winning races over there and the important thing is to feel you are doing a good job. Winning a race which everyone knows you are capable of winning and where you are even expected to win, is satisfying but you have just done your job. But to be in a car that everyone knows is not at the front of the pack and you manage to score points means you have done a good job and you have to take satisfaction from that, even if it's different to winning. When it goes well and you have something to smile about, that's the time to be careful and when there are times when you have nothing to smile about, then you have to deal with it, but that's not unique to Formula 1.
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