Scuderia Toro Rosso's new Ferrari-powered F1 car, dubbed the STR2, has made its debut this week in Barcelona, put through its paces on track by Tonio Liuzzi who is as yet the outfit's only confirmed driver for the 2007 season. Scott Speed, who drove for Toro Rosso last season, is still the favourite to take the second seat this year, but "contractual issues" still remain to be resolved.

On Tuesday the Scuderia Toro Rosso crew missed out on the chance of seeing their new car make its track debut, when a red flag stopped the session with just five minutes of test time remaining. However yesterday, Tonio Liuzzi was able to reward them with 43 relatively trouble-free shakedown laps, setting a best time of 1:26.296.

"The last few weeks have been a real rush for all of us," said Scuderia Torro Rosso's Chief Engineer Laurent Mekies in Barcelona yesterday. "So it was great to see our new car finally running and completing a respectable 43 laps. This was very much a shakedown and systems check, with no thought of setting quick lap times. Now, we must push very hard over the coming weeks to make up for the fact we have only started running quite late. Like everyone else, our next step is the test at the Sakhir circuit in Bahrain, starting on 22 February."
 

Scuderia Toro Rosso's co-owner Gerhard Berger was very cautious about the  potential of the new car to shift the team further towards the front on the grid: "We won't be getting any pole positions or race wins this year but we have progressed as a team and we have to move forward to fighting some of the bigger teams on a regular basis," he said in Barcelona.

Also rearing its head in Barcelona were many questions surrounding the actual legality of the new STR2 chassis, with both the Williams-Toyota and Spyker-Ferrari teams openly commenting that they believe the new car falls into the category of being a "customer car"; especially with it bearing a striking visual similarity to the Red Bull Racing parent outfit's new Renault-powered RB3 chassis. Berger was keen to dispel these theories, in Barcelona he told the media: "Our car is not a customer car. A customer car is when you go to another team, give them money and they give you a car. This is not the case with us and before we went down the route of working with Red Bull Technology we took our own legal advice and checked with the FIA. I am completely satisfied that our car is in compliance with the rules."

"Apart from the obvious one that the chassis is different to accommodate a different engine," Toro Rosso's Technical Director Alex Hitzinger retorted in answer to questions on the difference between the Toro Rosso STR2 and Red Bull RB9, "nearly all the major elements are different too, including bodywork, wings, management systems and so on."