Toro Rosso completed a busy day of F1 launches at Jerez by revealing their 2012 car equipped with yet another sliding nose
Red Bull junior team begin new era with new drivers
Toro Rosso completed a busy day of car launches by revealing their STR7 in the Jerez pit lane late this afternoon.
Just hours after the Italian-based outfit's senior sibling, Red Bull Racing, launched their car for the new season, Toro Rosso showed off their own latest handy work and exciting new driver line-up of Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne.
The most striking aspect of the new car is again the presence of a platypus-style nose, meaning McLaren is still left out in the cold in the increasingly crowded 'boxer's nose' club.
Team boss Franz Tost is eyeing an improvement on last year's eighth-place finish in the Constructors' Championship - when the team scored 41 points - and believes they have never been in stronger shape.
"STR6 was a major step forward in terms of performance compared to the 2010 car, the STR5, therefore I expect to see a further improvement with this year's car," he said.
"Last year, we finished eighth in the Constructors' Championship and clearly we want to do better than that this time. It is far too early to make predictions, but looking at the work we have done over the winter, we must set ourselves the target of finishing sixth or at least seventh by the time we pack up in Brazil in November."
He added: "The team has continued to expand over the past year in terms of our facility in Faenza and also in the number of staff who work there, so we are in better shape than at any time in our seven year history."
Toro Rosso caused a stir just before Christmas when the team announced that they had decided to replace their already youthful line-up of the previous three seasons, Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari, with the latest protégés of the Red Bull young driver programme, Ricciardo and Vergne.
Buemi and Alguersuari had helped the team to finish eighth in last year's Constructors' Championship, their best result since 2008 when then rising star Sebastian Vettel amazingly won the Italian Grand Prix.
But Ricciardo and Vergne are both former British F3 champions and have each impressed when they have run in Red Bull-owned F1 machinery in the past in Friday practice or test sessions.
Australia's Ricciardo, who raced for HRT in the final 11 races of last season, will be first behind the wheel of the Ferrari-powered STR7 at Jerez on Tuesday and was immediately wowed by the car's looks despite the ungainly nose.
"The car definitely looks sexy. And it's a bit emotional actually, seeing the first F1 car that will be mine to drive from the start of the season," he said.
"With the new nose, it's not exactly beautiful, but I'd rather have a quick car than a pretty one. Now I can't wait to drive it tomorrow, when I don't think I'll need an alarm clock to wake up to start the day."
Vergne arrives in F1 after impressing in three Friday practice sessions at the end of last season and a runner-up finish in the Formula Renault 3.5 championship.
"After the testing and all the work in the simulator, being here in Jerez unveiling the car, I feel like this is the real start to my Formula 1 career," the 21-year-old Frenchman said.
"It's very exciting and the next two days are going to seem much too long, while I wait to get behind the wheel of the new car on Thursday and Friday."
