'Little things' let Toro Rosso down - Key

40

Toro Rosso has potential for great results but keeps letting itself down by "little things", according to technical director James Key.

Key has produced another impressive car aerodynamically, which was competitive at the start of the season despite using a year-old Ferrari power unit. However, the team has missed out on major results, with sixth place for Carlos Sainz in Spain its best finish of the year so far.

While the team is currently sixth in the constructors' championship, it is 36 points adrift of fifth-placed Force India and Key admits there is a frustrating trend for Toro Rosso to fail to maximise its potential as a result of the smaller details.

"There have been some frustrations," Key told Autosport. "Unfortunately, it's a little bit of a thing with STR, we do all the hard work and then little things let us down or we let ourselves down.

"We are quite OK with performance but we know we are a bit compromised now with the engine, we can see we're the last in the pecking order now because everyone else has developed real quick.

"There are no big issues here, we're good as a team at the big projects. What we have to make sure is that we have everything covered in the finer detail in some circumstances.

"That can be what you do in an emergency in a pitstop if you have an unforeseen circumstance to a sign-off procedure for some system on the car. It's just minor things."

Breakfast with ... Alan Jones

Max Verstappen interview: Destined to be a champion?

Meet the British drivers chasing GP2 glory and an F1 seat

From Sauber to Ferrari - Exclusive interview with Kimi Raikkonen on F1's evolution

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

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.