Toro Rosso looking to halt performance slip

Toro Rosso technical director James Key says that the team must 'better compensate' for its weaknesses when the championship resumes at Spa at the end of the month.

The Faenza-based squad left Germany on Sunday thoroughly disappointed by its performance at Hockenheim, with neither Carlos Sainz or Daniil Kvyat reaching Q3 on Saturday, and neither driver scoring  points in the race.

"We knew there were a couple of elements to Hockenheim that increasingly wouldn't suit us as well as other teams, primarily the long straight, as it is quite power dependent," said Key.

"Those [remaining] teams running 2016-specification engines have picked up rather well over the last few races, and that could be seen very clearly at a track like this one.

"We brought a new aero update to this race, which appeared to work OK.

"We hope to get more out of it in the upcoming races; over the weekend we were learning about it and its major elements seemed to do what they are meant to."

Toro Rosso will return to current-spec Renault engines next season but in the interim it is forced to make do with its year-old Ferrari power unit, seen as the main culprit of the team's relative weakness.

Toro Rosso's technical team is forced to seek gains in other areas to compensate for its power deficiency and declining performance level.

"We are going to sit down now before the break and carefully go through a plan of how we will go about tackling the last part of the season.

"We still have some car developments to come. We must make sure we address some of the issues we had in Hockenheim.

"And we also need to make a better job of compensating for some of the weaknesses on our car."

Scene at the German Grand Prix

Quotes of the week - German Grand Prix

2016 German Grand Prix - Driver ratings

Breakfast with ... Christian Danner

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter