The grid has some new teams and some old teams – and, in between, lie Toro Rosso, the newest old team in Formula One, and their evergreen technical director Giorgio Ascanelli.
“Do you think King Leonidas and the 300 Spartans succeeded against two million Persians at Thermopylae? No, they all died!”
There aren’t many technical directors in Formula One who liken their task to legends of Greek antiquity – but Giorgio Ascanelli is far too interesting a character to make his point with dry statistics and flowcharts.
There’s very little in F1 that Toro Rosso technical director Ascanelli hasn’t seen and done before: back in the days when Michael Schumacher’s car was red rather than silver, Giorgio was the head of on-track engineering at Ferrari; before that he was race engineer to a certain Ayrton Senna at McLaren, before that triple world-champion Nelson Piquet had Ascanelli in his ear, and Gerhard Berger before him.
The question, incidentally, was on the topic of why Toro Rosso aren’t currently challenging in the top 10 like they were a few seasons ago.
'With a good job from our drivers and some good racecraft from the wall, we were able to do something exceptional' – Giorgio Ascanelli
Things aren’t quite so tough at Toro Rosso HQ in Faenza, Italy: the opposition don’t have engineers numbering in the millions (though Toro Rosso don’t have 300 to counter them, either) and Ascanelli is quick to add that they are in pretty good shape, but the metaphor does go some way to explaining the mindset: as the smallest of the established teams, his group are fighting a rearguard action against superior forces, and it’s a fight that only has one outcome. That said, Ascanelli professes himself to be pleased with his team’s performance this year.
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“If we finish ninth in the championship, that’s OK, it’s what was expected of us, but what I’ll take away from this year is the fact we were seventh mid-season, and not because of luck. It became clear that Sauber and Williams were faster than us, but with a good job from our drivers and some good racecraft from the wall, we were able to do something exceptional – but it’s very difficult to do that for a whole year. Having said that, we’re still working hard on this car and will keep trying.”
Toro Rosso’s position this year has been rather strange. Like the three new teams at the back of the field, they have designed their own chassis for the first time. While the cars have always been built in Faenza, the blueprints had previously come from Red Bull Technology’s headquarters in Milton Keynes. New rules prevented that from happening this year, and so Toro Rosso have struck out on their own. Unlike the new teams – and the reason why they were running two seconds a lap faster than them in Korea – Toro Rosso had a platform on which to build.
“If I look at Lotus, Hispania and Virgin, then I’m very grateful for what we’ve got,” says Giorgio, “but to look the other way, then we’re probably operating with a quarter of the capacity of the other teams. There are limits to how much wind tunnel time and CFD [computations fluid dynamics] simulation a team is supposed to do. The limits are designed to make teams cut back on their development work. We don’t have the resources to get up to the limit. It isn’t something I whinge about – I actually enjoy the challenge – but it is what it is.”
Looking to 2011, Ascanelli expects Toro Rosso to improve. Their design team will have a year’s experience and, more importantly, a better understanding of the product. “We started this season well, better than my expectations actually, but then we had some difficulties. We didn’t deliver development at the same rate as the other teams because we were not good enough and we did not have as many people as the others – but you have to build up the learning curve. First you build the car, then you try to make it work, then you try to understand it. We are still doing the understanding with this car – but every day we are slightly better.”
'Sometimes when you take a walk and turn around to look backwards, it’s amazing to see how far you’ve come' – Giorgio Ascanelli
As with this year, the privateers (excluding the over-achieving Red Bull Racing) are expected to continue their own personal battle, with Toro Rosso seeking to take the fight to Sauber, Williams and Force India. Another name determined to get into the mix are Lotus, with their new Renault engine deal and gearbox assembly supplied – ironically – by Red Bull Technology. One advantage Toro Rosso will have over the dark green cars is a brand-new Kinetic Energy Recovery System from engine suppliers Ferrari. Unlike the last time we saw KERS in 2009, Toro Rosso have decided to go hybrid.
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“The FIA makes no mystery of the fact the sport has to become green. They think KERS a good way and I respect their opinion. Our engine partners want to do KERS because they’re also making road cars and think they need a KERS on a road car, and maybe they’ll be able to learn something from using it in F1. For other engine suppliers, I’m not so sure this would be true, but Ferrari is special, and so for them, and for us, this is an opportunity to do something different. I’m very keen to find out. The English have a saying: ‘You can’t teach on old dog new tricks.’ Well, I’m a very old dog and I want to learn lots of new tricks.
“I know that some of the other small teams say KERS is too expensive, but I think it brings a relatively inexpensive lap time improvement. Say it’s worth about three-tenths of a second per lap around an average track. To acquire the resources to get that sort of extra improvement from the wind tunnel or CFD, it would cost us a lot more than the KERS will.”
There is a sense that F1 budgets are drifting back down to reality; that the power of the manufacturer teams is much diminished and the privateers are on the rise again. In the medium term, it might not be a case of the 300 Spartans versus the Persian Empire, and Toro Rosso might be able to compete on something approaching a level playing field.
“It’s a dream and a target,” says Ascanelli. “Sometimes when you take a walk and turn around to look backwards, it’s amazing to see how far you’ve come, just like it’s interesting to imagine how far you might get. That’s as true in F1 as it is in anything else. It’s certainly an interesting journey.”
Take a tour of the Toro Rosso factory in Faenza by clicking here
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