Scuderia Toro Rosso - Toro Rosso STR5

The Scuderia Toro Rosso STR5 was rolled out at the first F1 test of 2010 at Valencia on February 1st. The team's driver line-up of Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari, unchanged from the end of the 2009 season, unveiled the car in the pit lane in front of the team's garage before they and the team principal Franz Tost posed for the traditional round of photographs. After that the team completed an installation lap and the car spent the rest of the day in the garage owing to a gearbox actuator problem. Not a good start!

Toro Rosso enters its fifth year and for the first time has had to design and build the car completely by itself instead of relying on Red Bull and Adrian Newey's expertise to produce a hand-me-down chassis hacked to take a Ferrari engine installation. This year's car bears more than a passing resemblance to last year's Red Bull whilst being an evolution of the STR04, with the same tub outline at the front that other teams have also adopted. Along with the rest of the cars they have blessed the car with a large shark fin engine cover, the most visible feature on the new car. However the team say that the most fundamental changes lie around the rear diffuser and, unsurprisingly, the enlarged fuel cell. Meanwhile what engine work is allowed has centred around reliability and fuel consumption, the Ferrari 056 having a reputation for being relatively fuel hungry.

Sebastien Buemi enters his second year with Toro Rosso having completed a full season with the team in 2009. An excellent start saw him scoring points on his F1 debut - no mean feat last year as the STR04 wasn't quite the competitive car that the team had in 2008. Still just 21 he's clearly doing nothing wrong, neither Red Bull team afraid to chop an under-performing driver.

Spaniard Jaime Alguersuari was also a history maker last year, becoming the youngest driver to start an F1 race on his debut last year. Alguersuari's debut was a baptism of fire, the 2009 regulations not permitting him any time in the car before first practice on his first race weekend. He continued to struggle through the remainder of the season but with six days of testing before the opening race of 2010 he should be much better equipped.

Funded by Red Bull's Dietrich Mateschitz the team is most definitely the second string operation. Having the Ferrari engine can't hurt the team and now that they're not working with a compromise car that was built for a different engine, they could yet pull a few surprises come race weekend.

author: Phil Haigh