26/02/2014
NEWS STORY
Toro Rosso, which suffered a nightmare test last week in Bahrain, is hoping for a significant improvement in the final pre-season test.
With just 5 laps on the board for Daniil Kvyat on the opening day, things looked to have improved on Thursday when Jean-Eric Vergne took over, the Frenchman completing 58 laps. Whilst the Russian completed a further 57 on Friday, albeit 4.7s off the pace, his teammate managed just 19 on the final day, his team focussing on pit stop practice and "other procedures".
Admitting that it had "four days to work hard with its technical partners to try and solve its problems", the Faenza outfit was clearly hurting, having completed just 616 miles of running in all eight days of running to date.
"Our driver schedule is the same as at the previous test," said the team tonight, "which means Daniil Kvyat drives on the first and third days, Thursday and Saturday, with Jean-Eric Vergne at the wheel on Friday and Sunday.
"You don't need us to tell you we have not done as high a mileage as we would have liked so far in winter testing and the fact that other teams have also struggled is no consolation. We hope we can make better progress this week and back in the factory, we have been working very hard. Now, we just have to hope we are in a position to make the most of these days, doing plenty of kilometres and exploring the potential of our STR9."
"The job list is a long one, including getting to grips with all aspects of the new power unit, working on the elements that everyone used to talk about before these new rules, namely aero performance and set-up, as well as evaluating the Pirelli tyres. We'll do all this with a new chassis (STR9-04), which arrived in Bahrain yesterday."
Chris Balfe