The year 2007 marks the second season for Scuderia Toro Rosso of Faenza, an Italian town in the province of Ravenna, under the Red Bull umbrella. The single-seater used by the Italian team is the STR2, which holds a special place in Formula 1 history due to the intense legal controversies it sparked. The STR2 was at the center of a true diplomatic battle among constructors because of its extremely close relationship with its “twin,” the Red Bull RB3. The Concorde Agreement in force in 2007 required each team to build its own chassis for the car used during the season. The STR2 was unveiled on February 13 at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmeló and immediately caused controversy for being an almost identical copy of the Red Bull RB3. Colin Kolles and Patrick Head, team principals of Spyker and Williams respectively, promptly filed a protest for the blatant violation of the regulations. However, Toro Rosso was acquitted thanks to a subtle loophole: designer Adrian Newey was not a Red Bull employee but worked for a third party called Red Bull Technology. In this way, each of the two teams used a chassis designed by an external entity, entirely legally, despite the STR2 being so similar to the RB3 that mechanics from the two teams often exchanged spare parts behind the garages to solve emergency issues.
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| TORO ROSSO STR2, Vitantonio Liuzzi Istanbul, Turkish GP 2007 |
The technical staff responsible for the development of the STR2 was highly unusual. On one side there was the legacy of the Minardi team based in Faenza; on the other, the imposing influence of parent company Red Bull, headquartered in Milton Keynes, England. The Team Principal was Franz Tost, an Austrian and trusted man of Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz. His task was to transform the artisanal mentality of the old Minardi into a professional structure. Although Newey was effectively the designer of the STR2, Alex Hitzinger was still the Technical Director, later replaced mid-season by Giorgio Ascanelli. The Italian engineer, with a past at McLaren as Ayrton Senna’s race engineer, arrived directly from Ferrari and was tasked with managing the on-track development of the car, which had been designed in Milton Keynes and delivered to Faenza almost as a “black box.” One of Toro Rosso’s key figures in 2007 was Riccardo Adami, who became Sebastian Vettel’s race engineer once the German was promoted to full-time driver in the second half of the season. Adami would go on to forge a very special bond with Vettel, to the point of being instrumental in his move to Ferrari after his Red Bull years, during which he won four world titles.
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| TORO ROSSO STR2, Sebastian Vettel Monza, Italian GP 2007 |
The aerodynamics of the STR2 are the most interesting aspect of the car, as they represent the first true “Newey touch” applied to the Faenza-based team. The bodywork concept, tightly wrapped around the mechanical components, allowed the car to be extremely slim, with deeply undercut sidepods in the lower section to enable a greater airflow toward the rear diffuser, increasing downforce without generating excessive drag. One of the STR2’s distinguishing features was its complex front wing system, with a very raised nose to maximize the amount of air passing beneath the car, which is vital to feed the flat-floor diffuser. After just a few races, a second profile mounted above the main wing was introduced, bridging over the nose and connecting the two lateral flaps. This so-called bridge wing helped clean up the airflow directed toward the central part of the car and generate additional front-end downforce. The bargeboards behind the front wheels were very complex, and the sidepods, besides the already pronounced undercut, featured slits and chimneys on the upper surface to dissipate engine heat, as well as small winglets positioned ahead of the rear wheels to stabilize airflow and improve the efficiency of the rear wing.
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| TORO ROSSO STR2, Vitantonio Liuzzi Interlagos, Brazilian GP 2007 |
The STR2 was powered by a Ferrari V8 engine, unlike the Red Bull RB3, which used Renault engines, creating a paradoxical situation in which the “younger sister” had, on paper, a more prestigious and powerful engine than the parent team. Although the aerodynamics were excellent, the main problem of the STR2 lay in adapting to the Italian power unit. Red Bull Technology had in fact designed the car around the Renault engine, which was more compact and had different cooling requirements. Installing the Ferrari V8 in a chassis designed by Newey required modifications to the radiators and weight distribution, initially making the car difficult to balance and less reliable than its “sister” RB3. The gearbox was a longitudinal unit with semi-automatic sequential control and electro-hydraulic actuation, equipped with the now essential Seamless Shift system to allow gear changes without interruption of torque delivery. The main technical challenge was integration, in order to interface perfectly with the Ferrari engine block while being housed in a casing designed for the Renault unit. A critical technical aspect concerned the packaging of the radiators required by the Ferrari engine, which had different thermal demands from the Renault. The water and oil radiators in the sidepods had to be redesigned compared to the original Red Bull project, causing several reliability issues in the first half of the season, as operating temperatures were often at the limit, especially at hotter Grands Prix such as Malaysia.
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| TORO ROSSO STR2, Vitantonio Liuzzi Melbourne, Australian GP 2007 |
The two race drivers were confirmed from the previous season: Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi and American Scott Speed, with Swiss driver Neel Jani serving as reserve. The start of the season was quite difficult and lacking in satisfaction, marked by many retirements due to poor reliability. Despite the best result in the first ten races being Speed’s ninth place in Monaco, after the European Grand Prix the American driver had a violent verbal clash with team principal Franz Tost, who fired him with immediate effect, effectively ending his Formula 1 career. He was replaced by the very young and promising Sebastian Vettel, who up to that point had been the third driver for the BMW Sauber team. Even the talent of the young German was not enough to turn around an otherwise underwhelming season for Toro Rosso, but at the penultimate round in China at the Shanghai circuit, under torrential rain, the STR2 displayed exceptional drivability, allowing Vettel to finish fourth and Liuzzi sixth. Thanks to these eight points, Toro Rosso secured seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship, far behind its bigger sister Red Bull RB3, which collected 24 points.
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