Toro Rosso Begins Crash Test for STR5

Unlike in 2009, all Formula One teams this upcoming season will have to use in-house designed and developed machineries, as the International Automobile Federation (FIA) ruled out customer cars from 2010 onwards. Needless to say, Scuderia Toro Rosso was the team most affected by this rule book change, as the Faenza based outfit used to benefit from basic input from Red Bull’s Adrian Newey.

If, until now, Toro Rosso’s car was based on the initial work of Red Bull Technology – they did use to build some parts of their own, but the design of the car belonged completely to Newey – the 2010 season will bring us a brand new STR5.

According to the team’s technical chief Giorgio Ascanelli, Toro Rosso has already begun crash-testing their next year challenger. That means all the design cues are already in place for testing, once the car will pass the FIA crash test in the next couple of weeks.

“We are on schedule – and have already destroyed two million euros!” said Ascanelli, according to Switzerland’s Blick newspaper.

In order to get the job done in time, Scuderia Toro Rosso did something that no current F1 team had the courage to do over the course of 2009: employ new personnel. No less than 60 employees were brought to the team in recent months, almost half of those being sent to the team’s wind tunnel in Bicester (UK).

As compared to 2006, the season when action started to unfold at the Faenza factory, the team has more than tripled its employees (going from 80 to 257).

In other news, US F1 has also shown their first images of their 2010 monocoque on the team’s official site, alongside a short preview of how work at their North Carolina headquarters in Charlotte is developing prior to the new season.