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Scuderia Toro Rosso technical director James Key has said that the uncertainty surrounding which engine they would be using this season caused them a few headaches when designing their 2016 car.
Originally intending to use Renault engines, the Italian team switched to year-old Ferrari power units at the eleventh hour due to a very public falling out between the French manufacturer and the team's parent company Red Bull.
Amidst an upturn in form for Renault this year, Toro Rosso will switch back to their engines for next year, and having the agreement lined up so early is massively beneficial said Key.
"We are really happy to know which engine we'll be using now. That was a very tough situation with this car," he said. "We were very late with the Ferrari engine. We didn't really have any information about the Ferrari engine, so we sat down with them in December and discussed things, so it was extremely late."
"The fact is you build the architecture of your car around the power unit installation, and it's so complicated now. It's so much trouble. An optimum car is based around the integration of the power unit," he continued. "We tried to minimise the impact of that, but inevitably there are knock-on effects. The car was a bit too heavy at the start of the year. We had some issues with some of the cooling parameters.
"Many other things weren't optimum, we had to make some guesses in some places. And it costs you a lot of money as well. To do that in such a short space of time costs you a lot of money," added Key. "There are many, many things which even if it's difficult to tell when you see the car on the track, actually you know what's wrong with that car because you've had some compromises."
"I think it's okay, we are sort of on schedule at the moment, although the schedules move depending on what you find."
Speaking of the team's work on their 2017 car, Key said it was hard for the team to understand exactly where their car would be in relation to their rivals.
"I know most people are pretty hectic now with their 2017 cars. It's very difficult to tell how you are doing because you don't know what other people are doing with the regulations," he said. "One of the hardest bits is knowing what makes a car with such massive regulations change tick. It's so difficult to tell at this stage."
"We are going down a route of really trying to understand what makes a good 2017 car and see if we can achieve it."
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