Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsToro Rosso

Ferrari gives Toro Rosso 'more power everywhere'

Carlos Sainz says the 2015 Ferrari power unit gives Toro Rosso "a bit more power everywhere" compared to last year's Renault.

Toro Rosso switched from Renault to Ferrari power units over the winter, securing a deal to run year-old engines as Maranello did not want to provide a current specification power unit to a Red Bull-owned team. While Sainz was recently wary of judging the new STR11 too soon, he says there is a clear improvement from the power unit.

“It’s a step forward for sure, no doubt," Sainz said. "As expected we have a bit more power everywhere, we have more top speed, we have easy handling of the battery and we have the same drivability - maybe a bit better - but that was not the biggest change, the biggest change is the power that is exactly what we needed and for the moment reliability also looks promising.”

With the new Toro Rosso coming together late as a result of the power unit change, Sainz is confident there is plenty more performance to be found during the second test.

"We didn’t really look at performance, we don’t look at anything other than reliability," Sainz said. "That was our weakest point last year and at the moment I’m confident that the car is lapping and lapping and lapping and not giving big issues.

"We are having small issues - very, very small issues that have to be addressed - but apart from that there is progress and confidence that we could have better reliability this year.”

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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.