"So far this year, we have scored points in races where there have been unusual incidents involving frontrunners. At the moment, we still need these sorts of situations to pick up points, but the big difference between
Scuderia Toro Rosso now and in the past is that, now, when those situations have arisen, we have taken them. This year, there have been three chances and we took them all. Last year, out of three chances, we only took one. We are more mature as a team, but much will depend on how our nearest rivals progress over the second half of the season."
Despite the problems with the cars, and four first-lap exits in the first four rounds of the year, Tost feels that the performances produced by rookie tandem
Sebastian Vettel and
Sebastien Bourdais has been on a par with expectation.
"The drivers have so far performed as I had expected, given that both of them have very little
F1 experience," he reasoned, "Vettel has pretty much jumped into F1 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. Bourdais had a fantastic start in Melbourne and he has also had some other good races. He too is improving and we can expect to see more good races from him."
