Scuderia Toro Rosso has announced the appointment of Giorgio Ascanelli as the team’s Technical Director. For the past five years, Ascanelli has been working as Technical Director for Maserati Corse, heading up the Trident brand's successful return to international GT racing with the MC12 sportscar.

Prior to joining Maserati, 48-year-old Ascanelli established excellent F1 credentials, including a long spell as Race Engineer and Head of Research & Development for Ferrari, with brief stints at Benetton and McLaren, at the latter team he worked with Ayrton Senna during the 1992-93 seasons. He also worked one season for Fiat's in-house rally competition department, Abarth. The Italian also has a special link to Scuderia Toro Rosso, as he was Gerhard Berger’s race engineer when the Austrian raced for the Prancing Horse.

This appointment means that Alex Hitzinger is now free to concentrate on his original role, heading up the Advanced Technologies Department for Red Bull Technology, having additionally deputised as Toro Rosso Technical Director for the past few months since the departure of Gabriele Tredozi.

Meanwhile the Toro Rosso team wrapped up three days of testing on-track at Sepang last week ahead of this Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix. Scott Speed and Tonio Liuzzi were both in action as the team put some much-needed miles on their new STR2 chassis.
 

The Ferrari-powered STR2 chassis has seen very limited track testing as it arrived just before last month's F1 season opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. Three main items on were on the test agenda, and as well as putting more miles on the car, at Sepang Toro Rosso also worked on race preparation for the next Grand Prix, including evaluating the two types of Bridgestone Potenza tyre and finally, evaluating some new aero and suspension components.

"In some ways, this was like an extension of winter testing for us," said Chief Engineer Laurent Mekies. "We had four busy days and reliability was okay for this stage in the season, but we still have a lot of work to do. The new aero and suspension components produced positive results and we hope to use some of them as early as next week's race."