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Red Bull's impending Honda deal means Toro Rosso has been virtually playing a test role for the parent team's 2019 season - but that doesn't mean it has ceased concurrent chassis developments. With the end of the season in sight, you could forgive a midfield team like Toro Rosso for giving up on improving its current car and instead be focusing entirely on 2019. However, its STR13 has remained a sort of mobile laboratory as it, Honda and Red Bull have laid down the foundations for what they hope will be a good challenge in years to come. On the engine front, Honda has not hesitated in using Toro Rosso’s car as a test bench this year – which has helped it accelerate...

Toro Rosso has never been a team afraid to do something different, and the Italian Grand Prix highlighted a design lead that has helped its straightline speed performance. Like sister team Red Bull, Toro Rosso has been well aware that the power deficit it suffers means it has to do all it can with its wings to try to help boost its straightline speed performance. While it did not go as aggressive as Red Bull in terms of the levels of downforce it ran at Monza, the team again opted for a unique DRS design element that has played a key part in helping keep it in the fight this year. The DRS pod actuator (arrowed) is different to other...

Formula 1 teams were willing to pay the price for having draggy cars in their pursuit of 'dirty downforce' for the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend. The Hungaroring is a challenging place for both drivers and engineers alike, and is often described as 'Monaco without the walls'. It is indeed a high-downforce circuit, very much like other street circuits, but it rubbers in much more like a traditional track. To further add to the complications, temperatures are often high and that means cooling the brakes and the power unit become a critical factor, resulting in aerodynamic efficiency being sacrificed. It is a track where extra grip pays off more than straightline efficiency – which is why teams focus more on finding...

They might not be direct rivals on track in Formula 1 right now, but this hasn't stopped Red Bull from taking cues from McLaren in the latest design of the RB14's floor. Max Verstappen’s ability to take Hockenheim’s Turn 1 flat out during qualifying – and being the first man in Formula 1 to do that – shows just how good Red Bull’s chassis is. But the team has not rested on its laurels at all, and has been aggressively developing the car in a bid to try to keep Mercedes and Ferrari on their toes. At the German Grand Prix, Red Bull followed a design path that was initially trodden by McLaren and then followed by Renault and Ferrari in changing...

Red Bull's long-standing power deficit to rivals Mercedes and Ferrari has often forced it to be aggressive with its wing settings in a bid to ensure it does not lose too much time on the straights. The team has often tried to trim out its wings, and it has not been unknown for Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo to experiment with wildly different wing levels to try to discover the best performance. The high-speed characteristics of Silverstone, with the flat-out corners effectively being treated as straights, meant that Red Bull had to go pretty extreme last weekend through. Both Mercedes and Ferrari ran with the low-drag style wings that were used in Baku, which forced Red Bull to try to go with an even smaller angle....