Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsToro Rosso

Toro Rosso challenge is to negate power unit deficit

Max Verstappen says Toro Rosso will have to try and negate any deficit with its power unit later in the season through car development.

Toro Rosso is running a 2015-specification power unit this year having secured a late supply from Ferrari. The team looked impressive during pre-season testing, with both Verstappen and team-mate Carlos Sainz noting an improvement from the power unit department compared to last year's Renault.

Speaking to F1i after testing, when asked if he is wary gaps could widen later in the season due to a lack of power unit development, Verstappen replied: “Hopefully not, but if we are quite realistic it could happen like that.

"It’s just a bigger challenge for us to improve the car more.”

And Verstappen says the biggest positive for Toro Rosso has been the step forward in reliability provided by last year's Ferrari power unit, with only Mercedes completing more mileage throughout pre-season.

"I think we can be quite happy about the progress we’ve made. The reliability is very positive so that’s a big plus definitely ... Nobody expected it this good. Of course we wanted it to be better than last year and I think we definitely improved that.”

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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.