Carlos Sainz Jnr pronounced himself happy with Toro Rosso’s upgrade package for the STR10 which the team ran or the first time today.
The car is substantially changed from its launch specification and features a much shorter nose with a Williams-style tip.
“Towards the end of the morning, I managed to do a real run,” said Sainz. I could immediately feel an improvement in the car, in terms of its overall grip and balance.”
“That was a very positive and motivating feeling for the rest of the day,” he added. Sainz ended the first day of the final test with the seventh-fastest time, having only used the medium and hard tyre compounds.
The rest of the day was disrupted by a technical problem, Sainz added. “We did have an issue that cost us some track time in the afternoon, but the guys did a great job to fix it and get me out on track again, with enough time to do two more useful runs before the chequered flag.”
Sainz also tested a development medium tyres for Pirelli. His best lap on that tyre, 1’27.449, was half a second off his best on the regular medium compound.
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Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
26th February 2015, 18:42
The old one looked better.
Ban it!
ECWDanSelby (@ecwdanselby)
26th February 2015, 20:26
Yuck.
Cannot stand that horrible jigsaw nose.
STR usually make some of the nicer looking shaped cars (despite a boring, unchanged livery – I still think they should make the main colour black!), but this has ruined it a bit.
William Stuart (@williamstuart)
26th February 2015, 21:24
Wasn’t it Red Bull that were supposed to get the new nose, perhaps the postman confused the two…
Polo (@polo)
26th February 2015, 22:34
With crash tests very difficult to pass these days (and getting harder and harder each year) it’s possible that more teams than just Toro Rosso haven’t been able to use their final noses yet, and we may see other teams changing their noses early in the season.
I’ve heard that Mercedes and Ferrari (at the very least) are likely to be introducing new noses at some point early in the season for example (after they can successfully pass the crash tests) in a similar vein to Mercedes in 2014, when they updated their nose in Spain to the “U” shape (that was very hard to crash test).
Ferrari is planning to switch to a “shorter nose”. According to Craig Scarborough, Mercedes’ current nose is quite wedge-like and he expects a new design with a more curved shape and possibly a slightly more “U” shaped tip (as much as the regulations allow) as soon as it can pass the crash tests.
I’m just hoping that we won’t end up with most of the noses conforming to the “thumb” tip as more teams pass the crash test for their final noses. Though I’m sure a good amount of teams are already using their final design (particularly the teams with less money who can’t afford loads of crash tests).
JCost (@jcost)
27th February 2015, 6:36
So Ferrari will get an old Toro Rosso nose…