Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsToro Rosso

No Toro Rosso updates before Austria

Carlos Sainz says Toro Rosso will not update its car before the Austrian Grand Prix following a strong start to the season.

Sainz and team-mate Max Verstappen qualified fifth and sixth respectively in the Spanish Grand Prix, but fell away in the opening laps of the race. Having been working on tyre management on high fuel during this week’s in-season test, Sainz said the basis of the car is strong enough that it won’t be updated for another three races.

Asked if there had been any new parts tested on Wednesday, Sainz replied: “No, no parts, the car is the same as it was on Friday with the new parts for the race.

“We will remain like this until Austria, we have to optimise our package and improve what we have. It is a very nice package and we will see what we can do in the next races.”

And Sainz says the focus was on learning about the car rather than trying to prepare for upcoming races.

“We didn’t look too much into Monaco, it is a completely different track to here. We focused on our weaknesses of the weekend. We had a good opportunity to learn and that is what we did.”

However, Toro Rosso’s running was not without reliability issues after Sainz stopped at the entry to the pit lane.

“We had an ERS failure, which is not ideal because you want to complete as many laps as possible. This is a great opportunity, only one in season test for me, we lost a bit of mileage there. The parts were repaired, we put new ones back on and it was fine.”

Click here for Wednesday's gallery from testing at the Circuit de Catalunya

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.