Toro Rosso will have to wait until the Monaco Grand Prix for the next major update on its car as it attempts to take the fight to Force India, Sauber and Williams in this year's constructors' championship.
The Italian team kicked off its 2011 campaign with four points at the Australian Grand Prix but has failed to score at the last two rounds. Nevertheless the car's aggressive design, which features heavily undercut sidepods often referred to as a double floor, has shown plenty of promise - evident in China where both cars qualified in the top.
Chief engineer Laurent Mekies said a significant improvement is scheduled for Monaco in two races time.
"We have planned major steps for car development during the year that have been established since before the start of the season," he revealed to Toro Rosso's website. "At some point pre-season, you have to sign off the car to go into production to be built and maybe you have a good idea for a component the next day, so these are the building blocks for your next development update. This has indeed been the case with us and we will see a significant step introduced in Monaco and another one later in the season.
"These two steps are planned and will hopefully provide good performance improvements, however, it is also true that with minimal testing allowed, we have been trying different set-ups at the races and these can lead you down different paths in terms of ride height, or the type of springs to use, or in terms of the aero balance on the car and these elements can also impact on the development strategy for the car."
Mekies is pleased with Toro Rosso's start to the season - it is currently seventh in the constructors' championship ahead of Williams and Force India - and is hoping it can continue to compete with the midfield for the rest of the year.
"We discovered more or less what we had expected after the winter testing when the car proved to be well born," he said. "At the first race, we found we had a reasonable race pace and our direct competition came, as expected from Williams, Force India and Sauber and we found ourselves fighting these guys throughout the opening three races of the championship. Our STR6 appeared to have the potential to fight them, which was good news.
"Qualifying went well in all three races, converting that into points in Melbourne, but not in the next two rounds, but I think that from a performance level, we were right there at all three races. However, it is part of the game that in some races you manage to put everything together properly and in others you do not: this happened to us, it can also happen to our opponents and this explains our position, just trailing a few points behind Sauber in the table. We are going to have an interesting fight with these three or four teams all season long - if you like, this is our championship battle within the championship."
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