Toro Rosso team boss Franz Tost has said the team heads into the season opener in Australia more confident than ever before after their most successful pre-season testing programme since the team was formed eleven years ago.
Toro Rosso’s 2016 challenger the STR-11 showed increased reliability and performance throughout all eight days of testing eventually finishing second on the miles achieved list with 3,034, only Mercedes managed more with a total of 3,742 miles achieved. Just as impressive as the mileage gained was the team’s consistently quick pace, they finished the pre-season fourth in the overall timings despite the team only deciding to use a Ferrari power unit at the end of 2015.
When asked how he would assess the two tests Tost told Autosport
“We’ve done so many laps and collected so much data, and from the driver point of view, the engineering side, the team itself, we have reached quite a good level.
“The target is fifth place in the constructors’ championship, and if we want to achieve this then we have to perform well and score points in all the races.
“Sometimes, hopefully, we will be able to come up with a highlight, which will be a position in the top five.
“But for now, our level of confidence and optimism is higher than ahead of any other season.”
Tost admitted he was pleasantly surprised by how reliable the STR-11 was considering the short amount of time the team had to design, build and test the new car.
“To be honest, we didn’t expect to be in a position to do so many laps after the last two or three months because we worked 24 hours [per day] to finish the car in time,” said Tost.
“The first time I saw our gearbox and how it is fitted into the car, I thought ‘Jesus Christ! How can we check the reliability?’ because you don’t see all the cables, lines and tubes anymore. Everything is covered.
“Fortunately, it works so far. Now we have to prove it in the races, but from a reliability point of view, I am quite happy.”
The confidence gained from a successful pre-season has meant Tost is now expecting both Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz to regularly find themselves in the final part of qualifying as well as top ten finishes.
“It’s difficult to assess [where we are] because you don’t know how much fuel the others had in the car,” he said.
“But generally speaking, I expect both cars to be in the top 10 because I’m quite optimistic with adding our performance.
“The car so far behaves quite good, and from the reliability point of view, we have never been at such a high level because we have finished a lot of laps.”
