The British Grand Prix marks the mid-point of the season: too early fornostalgia, but time for a look back over the first half of the year, with the teamprincipal, the drivers and the chief engineer.
FRANZ TOST
After half a season, we now have a team that has better stability and increasedcooperation between the different elements which means the team is getting betterall the time, although we are still in a situation where we are recruiting new staff. Butthis is not a job advertisement! How well the car performs is the result of all thedifferent departments within the team, not just the technical department but thewhole organisational structure of the team and down to the detail of how themechanics build the car. At this point in the season, I can see the people now paymore attention to detail and this is the first step to improving performance and weare working in the right direction.
The rumours regarding the sale of the team, when they grew stronger again earlierthis season, did have an effect on us, but only for a short time. If every week there isa story that the team will be sold it is not so funny for the employees. But themessage we have from Dietrich Mateschitz is clear, that for 2009, everything willremain 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. Weare 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 arecompeting with Red Bull Racing and both teams are made up of verycompetitive racers. I can only say thank you to Red Bull Technology, because thepeople there around Adrian Newey have done a tremendous job as we can seefrom this STR3 car. Unfortunately, the new car was a bit late: if it had been finisheda month earlier, allowing us more testing time to acquire more data, ourperformance could be better now.
The drivers have so far performed as I had expected, given that both of them havevery little F1 experience. Vettel has pretty much jumped into Formula 1 after a veryshort racing career. With the current very high level of performance from all thedrivers on the grid, you can’t just come into this category and show the others howto drive. A young driver needs three years until he understands what F1 is about: it’snot just driving the car, he needs to understand the whole environment, theengineering, the marketing, the press and bring all these elements together to buildup the complete picture to understand when to do what. On this level I am veryhappy with both our drivers. Vettel is doing a very good job because we can see hislearning curve is increasing and he is getting better and better and I am convincedthat in the next few races we will see the results of this. Bourdais had a fantasticstart in Melbourne and he has also had some other good races. He too is improvingand 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 asuper race up until two laps from the finish, but despite everything I have fondmemories of it and it was a nice debut. After that we struggled a bit with sometechnical problems and I made some mistakes. We lacked a bit of competitivity untilwe got the new car. When that came, our potential was much higher but now I needto find what works for me with this car and I’m not quite there yet. But we continue towork 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’thave that much experience of Formula 1 and the switch to the new car for Monacodid prove a bit problematic for me. Adding to that difficulty was that, very shortlyafter we ran it for the first time, we then had a new aero package, and with limitedknowledge of the base car, this further complicated the situation in terms ofunderstanding the car’s behaviour.
Coming from being a front runner in Champ Cars to my current position in F1 hasnot been hard to deal with. I was not always winning races over there and theimportant thing is to feel you are doing a good job. Winning a race which everyoneknows you are capable of winning and where you are even expected to win, issatisfying but you have just done your job. But to be in a car that everyone knows isnot at the front of the pack and you manage to score points means you have done agood 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 becareful and when there are times when you have nothing to smile about, then youhave to deal with it, but that’s not unique to Formula 1.
SEBASTIAN VETTEL
The season so far has been quite interesting, with a lot of up and downs. We had anexcellent start in Australia with a very good qualifying. We started the season withthe old car, which in the end was the right decision because we were looking forreliability. After Australia, the next four Grand Prix starts or first laps were not quiteso successful. We always had a first lap incident and crashes. But what can yousay, sometimes shit happens, so you just have to focus again on the next race and Iwould say Turkey was more or less the turning point. We finished last in the race,we had quite a few difficulties with the pit stops and so on, but still we finished therace. In Monaco we introduced the new car which was only my second time ofdriving it. We had a very good race there, in very tricky conditions. We took oursecond finish of the season and my first points at the same time so that was verygood. Then we went to Montreal which again is a special place and the race wasobviously playing into our hands with the one stop strategy starting from the pit lane.It was good to have the safety car at the right time which helped us. But moreimportant was the pace, which was very good all weekend and we were able tofinish in the points again, P 8. Then we had the first real test with the new car inBarcelona introducing new parts which brought a good step forward and in Magny-Cours, we had a very competitive package. It seems we are going in the rightdirection, steadily improving. Hopefully, for the rest of the season, maybe even nextweek in Silverstone, we are in a good position to score some more points. So thetarget for the rest of the year is always to achieve 100 percent of our ownperformance.
GIORGIO ASCANELLI
We had decided to start the season with a modified version of the ’07 car and onbalance, we have no regrets. Currently, we are just one point short of our total forthe whole of last year, so we must have done something right! I don’t regret anydecisions we took. However, in the early part of the season with STR2B, we pickedup fewer points than we should have done, but this was not because we were usingthe old car, but rather it was down to the way we ran it and an unexpected reliabilityissue which was due to problems on quality control from a supplier. All the evolutioncomponents we fitted to the STR2 completed big mileages in winter testing andwhen we came to the races, they then threw up some difficulties. Nevertheless, wepicked up two points in the first five races using this car.
The STR 3 is a much better car. Introducing it once the season was underway wasthe wise choice although its introduction has not been painless. We suffered asignificant lack of parts which delayed the introduction of the new car from Turkey toMonaco. I think, as I’ve said before that we were brave, mad and clever to launchthe car in Monaco, because it did pay off. We handled a difficult situation in terms ofparts rather well and this weekend at Silverstone should be the first race where wehave sufficient parts to race at a decent level. One side effect of this will be that ourdrivers will feel freer to take a few more risks, because up until now, they have beenvery mindful of our parts availability situation. I hope they will now be more daringand consequently go faster!
We are not yet where we should be with the new car. The last race in Franceproduced a good qualifying and race, but I feel that neither our drivers nor weengineers have yet taken the best out of the car. We still have a steep learningcurve and there is more to come. This is partly due to the fact that we adopted asignificant aero upgrade for the Magny Cours race having only had the briefest oftests in Barcelona. It changed the car quite significantly and we are still learning howto get the most out of the new package.
With Red Bull Technology on the chassis side and Ferrari supplying our engines, wecan count on two very strong partners. Now we have reached the point in theseason where we are already working towards the 2009 car. However, before then,there is the small matter of the remaining ten races to deal with. Of the comingcircuits, the high speed ones favour us a bit more, so we should be alrighteverywhere except Hungary. So far this year, we have scored points in races wherethere have been unusual incidents involving front runners. At the moment, we stillneed these sorts of situations to pick up points. However, the big difference betweenScuderia Toro Rosso now and in the past is that, now, when those situations havearisen, we have taken them: this year there have been three chances and we tookthem all. Last year, out of three chances we only took one. I believe this is a trendthat should continue. Today, we are more mature as a team, but much will dependon how our nearest rivals progress over the second half of the season.
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