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No compromise for Toro Rosso

Toro RossoToro Rosso have ruled out trying to reach a compromise with its rivals over the customer car row, although they have admitted that they took a contentious route with their STR2 car for the 2007 season. The Ferrari powered car was launched on Tuesday and many people are now saying that they do believe the customer car is illegal.

The loophole they are trying to exploit comes from the phrasing of the Concorde Agreement – the car is actually designed by a third party company, Red Bull Technologies, meaning that both Toro Rosso and Red Bull each own the intellectual copyright to their racers.

STR bosses have insisted that their car is legal, stating that not only is it powered by a different engine to Red Bull, but it also has completely different bodywork and systems management, although they do acknowledge that much of the car was not built in-house.

“No. No way!”, Franz Tost is quoted as saying when someone asked him about Frank William’s proposal of forgoing championship points or prize money. He also stated that no effort was being made on his team’s part to negotiate a deal with other disgruntled teams.

“I don’t know how you can compromise,” Toro Rosso’s team boss said. “Either you are inside or outside of the regulations. We think we are totally within the regulations.”

Meanwhile, the car itself failed to make it’s car ‘shakedown’ on Tuesday, despite the fact Vinantonio Liuzzi’s V8 engine was running. A few minutes before the scheduled close of the day at the Circuit de Catalunya tests, Nick Heidfeld’s stricken BMW brought out a red flag meaning the STR2 was unable to complete a lap.

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