The aim was to fill the two cockpits with the brightest talents from the Red Bull Junior Team to give the brightest young stars of motor racing a chance to take their first steps in Formula One at the wheel of a competitive car and backed by a team of experienced engineers. They can look forward to an exciting season. In , a year-old Max Verstappen became the youngest-ever driver to race in F1 and he finished in the points 10 times in his debut year, scoring points finishes si times in a row to match a record set by Lewis Hamilton , Kimi Raikkonen , Jacques Villeneuve and Jackie Stewart So take a closer look at every Toro Rosso car and check out the factfiles featuring technical specification and fun facts on STR The following year, the STR2 joined the rest of the field in using a normally aspirated V8 which was used in Formula 1 until Up until , our cars were designed in close collaboration with Red Bull Technology.
Over the past twelve years, the engines gradually got smaller in terms of capacity, while the size of a Formula 1 car increased. In terms of performance, was an important year as aerodynamic downforce increased significantly as a result of rule changes that led to bigger front and rear wings, while much bigger tyres produced more mechanical grip.
The team appointed new technical director Giorgio Ascanelli to replace temporary stand-in Alex Hitzinger on 2 April. The season was generally disappointing, with poor reliability and driver errors leading to a low finishing record. Following the European Grand Prix , Speed was dropped under controversial circumstances and was replaced by BMW Sauber development driver Sebastian Vettel who was later confirmed for At the Chinese Grand Prix the Toro Rosso scored their best results, with Vettel finishing fourth and Vitantonio Liuzzi sixth, scoring eight points for the team.
These were also the drivers' best finishes in Formula One. It was a marked improvement over the preceding Japanese Grand Prix , where Vettel crashed into Mark Webber's Red Bull under safety car conditions while they were running second and third respectively, and Liuzzi lost a potential point after a second penalty for overtaking Adrian Sutil's Spyker for eighth under waved yellow flags dropped him to ninth.
With the Concorde Agreement outlawing customer cars from onwards, Dietrich Mateschitz put the Toro Rosso team up for sale in March He aimed to secure a buyer by the end of , while the team continued in its present guise until then. Bourdais earned his first points in F1 with a 7th place finish at the Australian Grand Prix.
Vettel scored his first points of the season with a 5th place finish at the Monaco Grand Prix. The team showed steady improvement throughout the season, leading up to a solid performance at the Belgian Grand Prix which saw both cars running in the top six for most of the race, and with Bourdais and Vettel running 3rd and 4th respectively on the final lap until cars on tyres better suited to the extreme wet conditions passed them, demoting Vettel to 5th and Bourdais to 7th.
The team pulled off a massive shock at the wet Italian Grand Prix , with Vettel claiming a first pole position and the first win for himself and the team. This was the first win by a team based in Italy other than Ferrari since the German Grand Prix , which was won by Juan Manuel Fangio in a Maserati and also the first win for a Ferrari engine in a customer chassis. Vettel beat second-place Heikki Kovalainen by 12 seconds. Vettel was at it again in the next race, the Singapore Grand Prix , Formula One's first ever night race.
Vettel qualified 7th and finished the race in 5th, while Bourdais could only manage 12th. At the next race in Japan Vettel again showed his class finishing 6th. Bourdais, meanwhile, was doing well, until Felipe Massa , who had been running in 8th tried to overtake Bourdais.
Massa had climbed up to 8th place after having dropped down to 13th as a result of his drive-through and his first pit-stop.
Just after Bourdais left the pitlane after making his final stop, Massa attempted to pass him and the two cars collided at the first corner. Massa spun, but rejoined the track and eventually finished 8th. Bourdais finished the race in 6th place, but had 25 seconds added to his overall time as penalty for the incident, dropping him down to 10th place.
This ultimately had the effect of promoting Massa to 7th place, and giving him an extra championship point. It was a controversial penalty, and Bourdais was adamant that he was not to blame. Vettel's performances earned him a place at the senior Red Bull team for However, his final drive for Toro Rosso saw him almost play a crucial role in the world championship decider in Brazil.
In mixed conditions, Lewis Hamilton needed 5th place to clinch the championship, and was running in this position when he was overtaken by Vettel with two laps remaining. Unable to keep up, Hamilton dropped back, and only took the title when he and Vettel both overtook Timo Glock on the final lap. The team unveiled their new car last of all the teams taking part in the season, on 9 March Before the season started, the team's boss Franz Tost said that it would be "difficult" to do as well as they did in the season.
Buemi scored a 7th place on his debut race at the Australian Grand Prix. On 16 July , the team announced that Bourdais' contract was to be terminated with immediate effect due to disappointing results.
On 20 July , the team announced that Jaime Alguersuari would replace him as official driver for the rest of the season. Alguersuari failed to score any points during the season, managing to finish only 3 races out of the 8 he raced in.
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