20 http://www.racecar-engineering.com SEPTEMBER 2019
at some different brake duct concepts. Some
of them were quite fundamental changes, but
what is on the car is the best we found. For a
team like us to redevelop the front suspension is
a big job, and you would not do it unless you are
sure that it was worthwhile.’Gives you wings
A number of front wing concepts are on display
in Formula 1 in 2019, and there remains little
consensus on what is the best design. ‘Our front
wing concept is a little different to that of a lot
of the teams,’ Egginton says. ‘It gave some nice
gains in the wind tunnel initially so we went
with it. We have a more loaded outboard front
wing concept than some others, we looked at
other solutions but they did not work across
the whole aeromap so we focussed on the
concept we have now. It is possible that had wenormally has substantial implications for
the design of the bellhousing, which has to
accommodate some of these parts.
‘That was one of the big factors we had to
review, but we quickly realised that there were
no packaging compromises,’ Egginton says. ‘We
thought maybe we would have to make some
modifications, but the gearbox casing just fitted
without a problem. Going in the other direction
[fitting a gearbox designed for the Honda to a
Renault engine] might have been a problem.
Had it not fitted we might have done something
different, but it did so we decided to just do it. I
don’t think we would get that lucky every year.
The gearbox we have in the back of our car has
done a season already, we just put it in the car
and it works. As long as we treat it correctly and
operate it in the right environment it is fine.
‘That all meant that we could focus our
efforts on other things, and for a team like
Toro Rosso that is a big benefit.’ Egginton
adds. ‘We can concentrate on improving the
car performance rather than fault finding and
things like that. But there are other parts of the
car, small parts, which also come from the RB15,
as it made sense to use those.’
Rear view
As mentioned, it’s not just the transmission
casing that comes from the RB14, most of
the rest of the rear end also comes from the
2018 Red Bull too, including the complete rear
suspension and uprights. ‘On one level I do miss
having that technical freedom at the rear, but
when you look at how best to develop your car,
then we have got a finite amount of resource,
human and financial, and it was actually helpful
to do it this way,’ Egginton says. ‘We integrated
that rear end into our aero concept and re-
deployed the people to other areas. It’s a help in
developing the car quicker. So it was not such
a nightmare to get that all on the car, you just
commit to that model and develop around it.
We had a clear view before we committed to
the RB14 parts about what ride height range we
wanted to be in and the RB14 bits offered us the
range of set-ups that we wanted.’
Much of the front suspension also came
from the RB14. ‘It is a fairly conventional layout.
There is the third element which employs an
inerter, there is a heave damper, roll damper and
it is a rocker activated system with pushrods,’
Egginton says. ‘It packages well and it is as small
as it needs to be, which is one big reason we
decided to use it. It fits the chassis and has the
operating range we needed. Had it been larger
or shaped differently it might have caused issues
with our nose and front chassis design and if
that were the case we would not have used it.
It is a minimal compromise and another job we
don’t need to do, giving us more resource to
redeploy on other parts of the car.’
The STR14 outboard front suspension is
something of a departure from the concept seen
on the STR12 and STR13, where the outboard
upper wishbone mounting point was positioned
on an extension to the upright to try to get an
aerodynamic gain. This does not feature on the
2019 car and according to Egginton that is as
a result of the changes to the new front wing
and brake duct rules. ‘The front wing regulation
change drove quite a lot, such as your wishbone
position and wishbone twist,’ he says. ‘We were
initially intrigued to see how we could recover
some of the losses by losing all that furniture
on the front wing and end plate. So we spent
a lot of time in the wind tunnel looking at the
front suspension and the solution we have
arrived at worked out to be the best. We looked‘We thought that maybe we would have to make some modifications,
but the gearbox casing just fitted into the STR14 without a problem’
FORMULA 1 – TORO ROSSO STR14
New front wing and end plate regulations have meant that Toro Rosso has had to rethink its wishbone design for this yearThe STR14 front brake set-up. Toro Rosso designs its own carbon-carbon system which uses Brembo calipers