Zoom Tost happy with progress of the STR3

The British Grand Prix marks the mid-point of the season: too early for nostalgia, but time for a look back over the first half of the year, with the team principal Franz Todt and the chief engineer Giorgio Ascanelli.

Franz Tost
"After half a season, we now have a team that has better stability and increased cooperation between the different elements which means the team is getting better all the time, although we are still in a situation where we are recruiting new staff. But this is not a job advertisement! How well the car performs is the result of all the different departments within the team, not just the technical department but the whole organisational structure of the team and down to the detail of how the mechanics build the car. At this point in the season, I can see the people now pay more attention to detail and this is the first step to improving performance and we are working in the right direction."

"The rumours regarding the sale of the team, when they grew stronger again earlier this season, did have an effect on us, but only for a short time. If every week there is a story that the team will be sold it is not so funny for the employees. But the message we have from Dietrich Mateschitz is clear, that for 2009, everything will remain stable, not just in terms of employment but also in terms of the budget."

"Then, from 2010 we will see what happens. At the moment the team is stable. We are pushing hard, taking one step at a time and we have improved our performance. Our cooperation with Red Bull Technology has always been good even if we are competing with Red Bull Racing and both teams are made up of very competitive racers. I can only say thank you to Red Bull Technology, because the people there around Adrian Newey have done a tremendous job as we can see from this STR3 car. Unfortunately, the new car was a bit late: if it had been finished a month earlier, allowing us more testing time to acquire more data, our performance could be better now."

"The drivers have so far performed as I had expected, given that both of them have very little F1 experience. Vettel has pretty much jumped into Formula 1 after a very short racing career. With the current very high level of performance from all the drivers on the grid, you can’t just come into this category and show the others how to drive. A young driver needs three years until he understands what F1 is about: it’s not just driving the car, he needs to understand the whole environment, the engineering, the marketing, the press and bring all these elements together to build up the complete picture to understand when to do what. On this level I am very happy with both our drivers. Vettel is doing a very good job because we can see his learning curve is increasing and he is getting better and better and I am convinced that in the next few races we will see the results of this."