The Chief Race Engineer for Scuderia Toro Rosso, Phil Charles, appeared to be optimistic about performance after the fitting of a new aero package for the cars at the Hockenheimring on Friday, despite believing that it is ‘very tight in the mid pack’.
Charles commented that with the fitting of the new aero package, the Toro Rosso’s had to do some specific runs to make sure that it worked as expected, and that the results back were positive.
“We fitted a new aero package today and as usual this requires some specific and dedicated runs to confirm it performs as expected. I am pleased to say that so far all the analysis done has given ‘green lights’ – although, as always, we will need some time to really tweak and optimise around what the package brings us – and that was true between FP1 and FP2 today.”
With regards to general pace and performance, Charles seemed slightly disappointed with the cars lacking competitiveness, but did appreciate that it is very close in the midfield teams.
“In terms of our performance, I think it is again very tight in the mid pack and I had perhaps hoped to be a little more competitive here than we are. It is no secret that we have tended to rank a little on the low side recently in the speed trap rankings and this has been a significant source of lap time loss to our competitors today.
“Unfortunately, this has become quite a recurrent pattern as other power units have received upgrades in recent races. As a result, today’s setup work has focused somewhat on trying to maximise performance around what the new package brings us, but also to get a good compromise of a ‘raceable’ package from an overtaking point of view for Sunday, without compromising cornering performance.”
He also seemed pleased with Daniil Kvyat’s performance today, saying: “Daniil has performed relatively well today after taking a new direction on the setup side – I am hopeful this will pay dividends tomorrow and on Sunday as well.”
