Toro Rosso

This was not another Sebastien Buemi situation or a repeat of the Jean-Eric Vergne saga for Toro Rosso.

It was never going to be a case of unscrewing one driver's crash helmet, tossing it away as if it were a faulty lightbulb, inserting another and continuing as normal.

It was not even a case of identifying the least convincing of the four Red Bull boys, stuffing the unlucky one into the nearest cannon and firing him into the afterlife known as the World Endurance Championship, the DTM, IndyCar or Formula E.

Why? 

Because, for the first time in their decade-long existence, Toro Rosso were not dealing with an underperforming, good-for-nothing Formula One driver who could and should do better, but a vulnerable young man in desperate need of support.

In the months after he was replaced by Max Verstappen, suffering the humiliation of being the first Red Bull driver to be posted back to the B team, Daniil Kvyat carried the air of someone waiting to be put out of their misery, his head so low that it scraped along the floor of the paddock.

Fully aware of the company's habit of chewing up and spitting out anyone suspected of lacking the substance of a future world champion, Kvyat was convinced he was on borrowed time and was found discussing life after Red Bull as soon as his second race back at Toro Rosso.

"I want to give everything to this team, but when all of these things start to go wrong you look for a change of the situation," he explained at the Monaco Grand Prix, per F1i.com's Chris Medland, suggesting he would seek "help outside of Red Bull" once he began to repair his reputation with some decent results.

With such a resigned attitude, his results only got worse. At July's German GP, where he qualified 19th with a lap more than half-a-second slower than team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr., Kvyat hit rock bottom, admitting it was not the real him behind the wheel in that Sky Sports interview.

A tough watch: Daniil Kvyat down and distraught after #GermanGP qualifying blow https://t.co/O73oPnTxQN #GermanGP pic.twitter.com/KURu2Pipqr

— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) July 30, 2016

At a time Pierre Gasly, the next cab off the Red Bull rank, was excelling in the GP2 feeder series, that was the moment for Red Bull and Toro Rosso to make their move, to either trigger the trapdoor over the August break or quietly inform Kvyat his services would not be retained for 2017.

But they just couldn't.

Even by their standards, ejecting a driver from two different seats in a matter of months would have been cruel in the extreme, a potentially fatal blow to Kvyat's career as a premier racing driver.

And although their natural instincts may have been urging them to dump him in the same brutal fashion they had dropped Buemi, Vergne and Co. in years gone by, Red Bull couldn't be seen to give up on a driver as utterly despondent and lost as Kvyat.

In other words, an unusual situation required an unusual, uncharacteristic response.

It was telling, then, that as Kvyat's crisis continued—taking Kevin Magnussen with him into the wall in Monaco, crashing out of qualifying in Austria—and he gave Red Bull more and more reasons to marginalise him, they became increasingly compassionate toward the 22-year-old.

As reported by Motorsport.com's Jonathan Noble and Kate Walker, Toro Rosso's Franz Tost, the father figure once driven to physically removing a driver from his team, explained Kvyat would have a future in F1 as long as he regained his confidence.

As long as he managed to relocate the "really good driver" hiding within. As long as Kvyat felt well.

Tost's views were echoed by Dr. Evil himself, Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko, who told Sky Sports F1 at the Italian GP how Kvyat would be afforded a chance to recover—on a weekend Gasly made the mistake of believing the Toro Rosso seat was his.

The warmth shown to Kvyat when he needed it most, when it would have been far easier to place him on the pile of wasted talent, was crucial.

And after resetting during the August holidays, escaping the pressure of the paddock for those four precious weeks, he effectively secured another season with a welcome return to form in September's Singapore GP.

In the cold, analytic light of the post-race debrief, Kvyat was again too feisty for his own good at Marina Bay, where his worrying knack of picking the wrong fights at inappropriate times ultimately cost him a potential seventh-place finish.

Kvyat vs Verstappen, CHE GRINTA! #SingaporeGP #F1NightRace #Kvyat #Verstappen #F1Rai pic.twitter.com/VudUhAUgy2

— Marco Talluto (@FinG_Marcuss) September 18, 2016

Yet the sight of him scrapping with the driver who replaced him at Red Bull, swatting Verstappen's sustained attacks, was far more symbolic than an extra four points would ever have been. It was confirmation that Kvyat was finally "loving it again," as he declared after the race, per ESPN F1's Lewis Larkam.

That renewed spark was there for all to see in Malaysia and Japan, where he outqualified Sainz twice in the space of seven days, and when the announcement came at last weekend's United States GP, what had for so long been the unthinkable had become the inevitable.

Presented with another chance, Kvyat must now focus on addressing the lingering flaws in his driving, eradicating the kind of brainless errors we witnessed most recently in Texas and softening his inputs—something he was seemingly reluctant to do in his time as an all-action, podium-finishing Red Bull star.

With major regulation changes on the horizon, he will be offered something of a fresh start in 2017, when Kvyat will be a match for anyone when it comes to manhandling the physically demanding, new-generation cars—the Russian is one of the tallest, strongest, hard-charging drivers on the current grid.

But the real victors here are Red Bull and Toro Rosso for recognising this episode was very different to anything they had encountered before; for having the emotional intelligence to provide Kvyat with a sense of direction and piecing a broken driver back together again; and for proving that, deep down, F1's so-called career killers really do have a heart after all.

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Shortly after becoming the youngest-ever winner of a Formula One race at last weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, Max Verstappen had plenty of thanks to dish out.

First and foremost to Red Bull Racing, who had provided him with "such a great car to win straight away" in his debut race for the team, as he told the post-race FIA press conference.

Then to his mother Sophie, who "did a very good job" by bringing him "into the world" to begin with, and his father Jos, who from the minute his son turned four had worked tirelessly to help him conquer it.

https://twitter.com/sophiekumpen12/status/731846187242913792

And, last but not least, to Dr. Evil himself, whose latest plot had instantly proved to be something of a masterstroke.

As noted by F1 journalist Peter Windsor, Verstappen had been suffering from that common teenage health condition, CBA, when, around 24 hours after the previous race in Russia, Dr. Helmut Marko called to invite father and son to a meeting in the Austrian city of Graz.

He was less than impressed by the timing of the request, but a fortnight on and with a winner's trophy in his hands, Verstappen knew every move made by the head of Red Bull's young-driver scheme was done with his best interests in mind and explained how Marko had come to establish "a bit of a combination" with Jos.

Max Verstappen’s stunning win at the Spanish Grand Prix makes him the youngest ever GP winner 🙌🏼 pic.twitter.com/l2X6sbpsur

— B/R Football (@brfootball) May 15, 2016

Without wishing to discredit Verstappen's achievement, the 18-year-old could have expressed his gratitude to any number of people within the paddock for his maiden victory at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg for conspiring to end Mercedes' race before it even started; the Ferrari and Red Bull strategists for switching Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo to costly three-stop strategies; Pirelli for producing a medium tyre capable of surviving 32 laps; and even the sparring partner he had left behind.

As reported by Motor Sport Magazine's Mark Hughes, one of the reasons behind Marko and Co.'s decision to fast-track Verstappen to Red Bull was to diffuse tensions at Toro Rosso, where his tug of war with Carlos Sainz Jr. for the prize of a promotion to the senior team was becoming increasingly unhealthy.

On Verstappen's day of destiny, however, Sainz played an influential role in his charge to victory, becoming a roadblock between the Red Bulls and the Ferrari pairing of Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen following the safety car period after a strong start elevated him from eighth to third.

The time Vettel and Raikkonen wasted behind Sainz, who defended the position as hard as he dared in those early laps, afforded the Red Bulls the space they required to establish a decent—perhaps decisive—lead, with both Ferraris ultimately crossing the finish line within six seconds of Verstappen.

It was apt that as his former team-mate became a grand prix winner, Sainz—draped in a Spanish flag—was also celebrating the best result of his 14-month-old F1 career with a sixth-place finish at the beginning of a series of races that could shape his future.

Although Verstappen's greater elegance behind the wheel had become increasingly noticeable as their partnership progressed, paddock perception declared Sainz's performances had been more than a match for the Dutchman since the beginning of 2015.

As such, there was an inescapable feeling that Sainz, for all the suspicions that it could have been him driving a RB12 to victory at his home track, had seen his reputation further enhanced as a consequence of Verstappen's win.

As noted toward the end of last season, Sainz's strong understanding of his team-mate's character and his awareness that his rival on the other side of the garage was a once-in-a-generation talent had almost led to him developing a defence mechanism alongside Verstappen.

Rather than worrying himself sick about beating the boy wonder, a realistic Sainz understood simply keeping his team-mate honest would do him no harm as he weathered the media storm and patiently waited for his own moment to shine.

We witnessed that maturity when the Spaniard made no issue of the team-orders squabble at Singapore 2015 but informed Motorsport.com's Pablo Elizalde the incident allowed him to "know more what Max is about" and how he had received confirmation of Verstappen's fondness of "the bad boy role."

And we witnessed it ahead of the Spanish GP, when Sainz—after the initial disappointment of being overlooked in the Red Bull seat swap—soon began to "see it more and more in a positive way." 

Per Elizalde, he insisted he will earn his "chance" if he continues to "do well" by turning "the speed that [he had] shown so far into results." 

Watching a team-mate ascend to the senior team and achieve instant success—as we saw with Jean-Eric Vergne and, to a lesser extent, Sebastien Bourdais when Ricciardo and Vettel were promoted from Red Bull and Toro Rosso at the end of 2013 and '08 respectively—has the power to finish a driver's career.

But now standing proud as the Toro Rosso team leader—and no longer with Verstappen to "camouflage" his own efforts, as he told Elizalde—Sainz has found himself in the position of maximum opportunity he has always craved and with a much simpler path toward his ultimate "goal."

Should he maintain his advantage over new team-mate Daniil Kvyat, and should Verstappen hustle Ricciardo in the direction of a potential vacancy at Ferrari, Sainz, as the next cab off the rank, should be virtually assured of a Red Bull seat in either 2017 or '18.

Even when they have been pulled apart, Verstappen and Sainz—on the evidence of Spain—can still push each other along to bigger and better things.

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The Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso team is unique in Formula One in that it exists for the benefit of one of its rivals.

The team's goal is to take talented but raw youngsters from the Red Bull Junior Team and refine them into finished products who are ready to step up to the main Red Bull squad whenever a vacancy arises.

Sebastian Vettel is the most well-known and successful product of this system, while Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat also earned a promotion after a season or two at Faenza.

But for all the analysis and effort that goes into selecting suitable candidates, most Toro Rosso kids fail to make the cut.

Scott Speed, Sebastien Bourdais, Sebastien Buemi, Jaime Alguersuari and Jean-Eric Vergne all saw their F1 careers stall when they reached the end of their times at Toro Rosso, while Vitantonio Liuzzi hung around near the back of the field for a few seasons before following them into the wilderness.

Success is possible, but the statistics show that a driver is twice as likely to fail.

So when Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr. stepped up to Toro Rosso at the start of 2015, the weight of the world was immediately piled upon their young shoulders.

Both knew the score. Making the right sort of impact would give them a shot at the life they had always dreamed of; but if they failed to shine, their F1 careers would be over before they had truly begun.

Verstappen and Sainz Jr. took different routes to the pinnacle of single-seater motorsport.

The younger of the two, Verstappen—just 17 when he made his racing debut—was plucked straight from his first season of European Formula Three and thrust into the spotlight as the youngest-ever driver to sit on an F1 grid.

When his promotion to a race seat was announced in the summer of 2014, he had entered just 13 race weekends in single-seaters, contested a total of 39 car races and won 10 of them. His lack of experience drew comparisons with Kimi Raikkonen—a veteran of just 23 races when he made his F1 bow back in 2001.

And as was the case with Raikkonen, some felt he should not be driving the car. Jacques Villeneuve, the 1997 world champion, was an especially vocal critic, feeling Verstappen's promotion was undeserved. He told Autosport in August 2014:

It is the worst thing ever for F1 because it will have two effects. It will either destroy him or, even if he is successful right away, then F1 will be meaningless.

What will F1 be? It will be nothing. It doesn't do any good for anyone.

It does a good splash of publicity now for Red Bull but putting a Red Bull helmet on his head for four years [before F1] probably would have been better.

But others had no issue with the youngster's promotion, including double world champion Fernando Alonso. Speaking to Sky Sports News HQ, he said:

I think it is just one number on your passport, the age.

At the end of the day you need to be ready for the challenge and be ready for Formula One grands prix. Some people are ready at 17, some people are ready at 28—that is what we don’t know.

So before saying anything we need to see how Verstappen does next year and after six to eight races we can see if he was ready or not. But at the moment anyone is ready.

Both viewpoints had their merits—putting a 17-year-old onto an F1 grid was a risk, but as Alonso says, if a driver is good enough, he's old enough. Red Bull certainly thought this way, but with such limited experience, it was difficult to say whether Verstappen would flounder or flourish when he made his F1 debut.

There were no such question marks over the promotion of Sainz. Though just three years older than his new team-mate, the Spaniard had a wealth of experience behind him when he became a Toro Rosso driver a few months after Verstappen.

His climb up the motorsport ladder had been more traditional, starting with Formula BMW in 2010 and ending with an impressive, title-winning year in Formula Renault 3.5 in 2014. On the way, he took part in Formula Renault, F3 and GP3—per Driver DB, his post-karting, pre-F1 career amounted to 165 races.

But there were nonetheless a few doubts regarding Sainz. His age wasn't an issue, but his junior record, impressive in part, was worryingly patchy.

Sainz beat then-team-mate Kvyat to the title in the 2011 Formula Renault 2.0 Northern European Cup. He also defeated the Russian—now a driver with Red Bull in F1—in the standings of the more prestigious Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup in the same year.

But in 2012, the Spaniard failed to impress. Two of his Carlin team-mates—Jack Harvey and Jazeman Jaafar—comfortably beat him in the British F3 standings, and regular team-mate William Buller came out on top in the F3 Euro Series.

Sainz moved to GP3 in 2013 and reunited with former team-mate Kvyat, who had remained in FR 2.0 for an extra year. The pair drove for the Christian Horner-linked MW Arden team—with drastically different fortunes.

A strong end to the campaign saw Kvyat win the championship at the final race weekend of the season, taking three victories on his way to a total of 168 points. Sainz could only manage 10th in the standings, recording a best finish of second and scoring just 66 points.

Kvyat leapt to the top of the Toro Rosso candidates list, and the team rewarded him with a race seat in 2014, while Sainz switched to Formula Renault 3.5 in a desperate bid to revive his F1 dreams. The experience gained from a handful of 2013 outings in the series proved invaluable, and he dominated the season with seven wins from 17 starts.

The Spaniard had risen to the challenge under intense pressure and landed a move up to F1—but which Carlos Sainz Jr. would turn up when the 2015 season got underway?

It took only a handful of races to remove any doubts about either driver's ability to cope at the highest level. Sainz got off to a flying start with seventh on the grid and points on his debut in Australia, while Verstappen broke his own duck with a brilliant drive to seventh in Malaysia.

On the way, the Dutchman gave us the first glimpse of his impressive wheel-to-wheel driving ability, going around the outside of Ricciardo at Turn 1 and passing Sainz in unconventional—but spectacular—fashion late in the grand prix.

Reliability issues took their tolls on both men's points tallies, robbing each of a number of early-season scores. But for the most part, they suffered equally—and their on-track performances were also of a broadly similar level.

And that level was generally excellent, given they were both rookies. Following the Spanish Grand Prix, where both Sainz and Verstappen had qualified a half-second ahead of the two Red Bulls, Helmut Marko issued a clear warning to the senior team's drivers to up their games.

The Red Bull advisor told Kleine Zeitung (h/t Motorsport.com), "Our established guys need to look out. Paradoxically, the more inexperienced ones did the better job," before adding that Sainz and Verstappen were "something extraordinary."

It was high praise indeed from the man who guided Vettel and Ricciardo to the top, and it was nothing less than the two rookies deserved.

On Saturdays, it was Sainz who seemed to have the better pace, and after nine rounds of the championship, he led the intra-team qualifying battle 6-3. Verstappen had tended to be better in the races, but he had also made a number of race-ending errors—something Sainz, at this stage, was yet to do.

Verstappen earned two penalty points and a grid drop for crashing into Romain Grosjean at Monaco, and at Silverstone, he spun out after just three laps. But he nonetheless reached the halfway stage of the season with more points than his team-mate—10, to Sainz's nine.

These totals were far lower than they should have been—the STR10 was too good to only score 19 points from the opening nine races. Reliability had been the main culprit, with bad luck costing the team far more points than bad driving.

But at the Hungarian Grand Prix, the team's fortunes finally shifted—at least, they did on one side of the garage—and Verstappen's season truly exploded into life.

The Dutchman finished fourth at the Hungaroring to take his season tally to 22 points, and the battle between the two Toro Rossos was mostly one-way traffic from this point on.

It's true that Sainz encountered far more reliability trouble in the second half of the season, but Verstappen seemed to discover an extra gear, and the Spaniard simply did not have an answer.

In the 10 races from the Hungarian Grand Prix onward, Verstappen finished in the points eight times—including a string of six consecutive top 10s—to finish the year 11th in the drivers' standings with an impressive total of 49 points.

Sainz only managed three additional points finishes in the second half of the year, taking his points tally to just 18.

Furthermore, errors began to creep into his driving. A heavy crash in practice forced Sainz to start from the back of the grid for the Russian Grand Prix, and two weeks later, another mistake—this time in qualifying—left him 20th for the start of the United States Grand Prix.

It would be unfair to say Sainz went backward as the season progressed, and the reliability troubles he encountered massively magnified the difference between him and Verstappen. They ended the year separated by 31 points—a gulf that tells a wholly inaccurate story.

But there's no escaping the fact that Sainz did not appear to improve throughout the year as a rookie normally would.

Verstappen, by contrast, certainly did. As he gained experience, he became not only quicker in the races but less prone to errors—and his single-lap pace improved as well. By the end of the season, he silenced even his harshest critics, and the F1 team principals in Autosport's annual poll voted Verstappen the fourth-best driver of the year.

Sainz didn't even make the top 10.

The 2016 season will be pivotal in the careers of both drivers. Verstappen's performances in 2015 marked him out as a future world champion; he knows that if he can build on what he has already achieved, the F1 world will be his oyster.

A number of top teams are likely to have vacancies ahead of 2017, and Sky Sports F1's Martin Brundle expects both Ferrari and Mercedes to show an interest—while Red Bull, who have the youngster under contract, will no doubt also be in the mix.

If Verstappen can maintain his performance level throughout 2016, a promotion to Red Bull looks likely.

But if he moves up yet another gear and starts to beat Sainz easily and regularly, other teams will probably start to circle. If the big boys decide he is worth whatever it would cost to buy him out of his Red Bull contract, Verstappen could find himself with a choice between two or three of the top seats in F1.

Sainz is in a somewhat different boat. He drove well in 2015 and had a good debut year, but "good" is not enough for Red Bull—or for any team that can afford to pick a driver based on his talent alone.

Jean-Eric Vergne was good, as was Sebastien Buemi, but Toro Rosso cut both of them loose, and neither looks likely to ever race in F1 again.

In order to avoid that fate, Sainz needs to up his game and show the world he is an extraordinary talent, too. He must prove to Red Bull that he is as good as Verstappen—or at the very least, that he is better than one of the Austrian team's current drivers.

Unless something truly remarkable happens between now and the end of the year, there'll be a maximum of one free 2017 seat at the main Red Bull team. The probability is that Verstappen will be first in line—but if he goes elsewhere, the door might remain open for Sainz to step up instead.

But that will only happen if Red Bull consider him to be a better prospect than either Ricciardo or Kvyat.

Toro Rosso memorably scored their first Formula One victory at the Italian Grand Prix in September 2008 and then finished the season 10 points ahead of their parent team, Red Bull (the first and only time that has happened).

At the end of the year, Sebastian Vettel—the victorious driver on that rainy autumn day—was promoted to Red Bull and promptly repeated his feat, taking the Bulls' first-ever win at the Chinese Grand Prix in April 2009.

Of course, Vettel went on to win four straight championships with the big team, while Red Bull's junior outfit has continued developing drivers with the team firmly entrenched in the midfield.

But after a chaotic season for Red Bull, is the little Italian team that could (remember, they started life as the lovable losers, Minardi) ready to once again beat the Bulls from Milton Keynes? One notable person thinks it's possible: Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey.

"I think it is going to be an extremely difficult season for us frankly," said Newey recently, according to Motorsport.com's Jonathan Noble. "If we start the engine with the same power as we have had throughout 2014 and 2015, which I think may well be the case, then we are going to be even further behind."

Red Bull infamously slunk back to their previous engine partner, Renault, after spending much of the year criticising the French company and then openly courting Ferrari, Mercedes and even Volkswagen. Toro Rosso, meanwhile, will use year-old Ferrari engines in 2016, rekindling the partnership that won the 2008 race at Monza.

Newey told Motorsport.com that Honda should improve significantly over the winter, but also that, "Toro Rosso, our sister team by having a 2015 Ferrari, will be considerably ahead of this year's Renault power unit."

After their four titles, Red Bull fell to second in the constructors' championship in 2014 and then fourth this year. If Toro Rosso do end up with a stronger engine in 2016, the Bulls' spiral could continue.

Toro Rosso's 2015 chassis, the STR10, was one of the best on the grid. Rookie driver Max Verstappen figured it was second-best, behind only Mercedes, per Autosport's Edd Straw. However, the car was held back by a underpowered, unreliable engine.

Combined, Verstappen and his team-mate, Carlos Sainz Jr., used 15 internal combustion engines (ICEs) last season—one of the six elements of the hybrid power units, of which each driver was allowed four before receiving grid penalties. Only the McLaren and Red Bull drivers used more ICEs than Toro Rosso's, and the Ferrari drivers used 11.

In addition to the grid penalties and frequent retirements, once the STR10 was actually racing, the BBC's Andrew Benson estimated in September that the Renault power unit produced up to 70 bhp less than Mercedes' PU106B Hybrid. Ferrari was 40 to 60 bhp ahead of Renault, with Honda trailing the other three manufacturers.

Those numbers are what have Newey worried. Even an updated Renault power unit may not be able to make up a 40 bhp gap to the 2015 Ferrari engine. If Toro Rosso already have a better chassis than Red Bull (the 2016 cars will be an evolution of the 2015 designs, as major rule changes do not take effect until 2017) and they add a more powerful and reliable engine, well, it doesn't take an aerospace engineer to predict the result.

In terms of competing with the other midfield teams, Toro Rosso beat Sauber handily last year and finished just 11 points behind Lotus (who are regressing in the engine department, going from Mercedes back to Renault after the French company bought the team).

If Toro Rosso can stay ahead of the teams they beat in 2015 and catch Lotus and Red Bull as well, the fifth place that team principal Franz Tost targeted last season is within reach.

The only downside to Toro Rosso's switch to Ferrari engines is that it happened so late in the season. F1 teams begin designing their next cars almost as soon as their current ones hit the track, so the STR11 would have been nearing completion when the decision to partner with Ferrari was made.

Tost admitted as much in the team press release announcing the Ferrari partnership, saying, "It's true that time will be very tight for us to be ready for the first test, but we have the right team of people for this and I'm confident that together we will achieve a competitive package for next year."

It is not an exact comparison, but from 2014 to 2015, Lotus changed from Renault to Mercedes engines. In 2014, the team scored 10 points and finished eighth in the constructors' championship. This year, they scored 78 points—including a podium for Romain Grosjean in Belgium—on their way to a sixth-place finish.

Toro Rosso's improvement will not be as dramatic. The Mercedes power unit is stronger than Ferrari's, as we have seen, and Lotus uses the current Merc engine, while Toro Rosso are getting year-old Ferraris. Still, Lotus is a good example of the improvement that is possible from ditching the much-maligned Renault hybrid V6.

Ferrari powered the Italian Bulls to their best-ever finish in that 2008 season. Now, with the two companies reunited, can a return to the glory days—short-lived as they were—be far behind?

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So after the countless quit threats, the emergency paddock summits and the no-news news updates, Red Bull Racing appear to have finally found an engine for the 2016 Formula One season.

The four-time world champions' future had been cast in doubt over recent months as Red Bull tried and failed to secure a batch of V6 turbo power units from anyone but current suppliers Renault, with Mercedes, Ferrari and even Honda all fluttering their eyelashes at various stages.

With those opportunities ultimately coming to nothing, however, Red Bull's long, successful but strangely dysfunctional relationship with Renault is set to continue—albeit in a very different, detached fashion—for at least one more year, allowing them to focus on what really matters for a change.

Now the uncertainty is lifting, they can plan for the future, design the tiniest details of next year's RB12 chassis and plot their route back to the top of a sport they dominated just two years ago.

As F1 journalist Ted Kravitz told Sky Sports' Pete Gill and James Galloway, the team will receive a "basic Renault engine" for 2016, which will be modified by Mario Illien, an engine expert and a long-term associate of Adrian Newey, Red Bull's semi-retired chief technical officer.

The unique, "unbranded" engine agreement, should it be finalised, will be very much an temporary solution, a compromise made to keep the team on the grid when they could have easily been left dangling.

RT @tgruener: Mario Illien (Ilmor) joins Renault / Red Bull to help improve engine. http://t.co/7gOkAq1H2b pic.twitter.com/80JNDwKlFT #LWYBF

— F1 Grid (@F1grid) November 1, 2014

But it will, at least, offer Red Bull a chance to become the masters of their own destiny once again in an era when leading manufacturers, due to their success in mastering highly complex technology, have the power to play God.

That independence, after all, is what team principal Christian Horner cited as crucial when, per Sky Sports' Gill, he declined Sergio Marchionne's initial, semi-serious engine offer at June's Austrian Grand Prix, which makes it all the more concerning that Red Bull have allowed their B-team to fall back into the clutches of the Prancing Horse.

On the day Red Bull's future was plunged into grave danger at October's Russian GP—forcing Horner to hold discussions with Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 ringmaster, in full view of the Sochi Autodrom paddock—Scuderia Toro Rosso were sitting pretty on a powertrain deal.

Having decided Red Bull were far too dangerous a competitor to support, per Auto Motor und Sport (h/t Sky Sports), Ferrari were "only willing" to join forces with Toro Rosso, who are almost certain to run 2015-specification units in 2016.

As the senior team were reduced to door-to-door enquiries, desperately scrambling for a power-unit deal, Toro Rosso were assured of their future, empowered by the knowledge they would have what is currently the second-best engine in Formula One at their disposal.

The keyword, however, is "currently," for what initially appeared to be a huge advantage could, come the beginning of next season, be a severe handicap.

As Craig Scarborough, the technical analyst, told The Racer's Edge YouTube channel, the ever-maturing nature of the V6 regulations means each engine manufacturer will again "make another big step" in performance over the winter.

Mercedes—who shifted their focus toward their 2016-spec engine as long ago as September's Italian GP—will make major improvements to their energy recovery system, according to Scarborough, and continue to push boundaries.

Ferrari, meanwhile, will make changes "throughout the engine" in their efforts to catch the reigning world champions, while Renault—with its own team and, therefore, no obligation to follow Newey's fabled "tight-packaging" philosophy—will have the freedom to pursue its own development path.

And Honda? It may look terrible now, but as Scarborough predicts, the Japanese manufacturer "will benefit massively from a winter of development" when, together with McLaren, it can significantly overhaul its engine.

Should all the manufacturers make the advancements they are capable of during the winter break, there is a danger that Toro Rosso, with year-old engines, could be nailed to the rear of the field next season.

And with the in-season development, token system being retained for 2016, the gap between Toro Rosso's out-of-date package and the teams running the latest accessories may only widen as the year progresses, potentially stunting the growth of two of the most exciting talents in F1.

Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr.—like Daniel Ricciardo, Daniil Kvyat, Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button in 2015—risk becoming the latest innocent victims of engine politics, their progress halted and their performances undermined by the limits of their machinery.

Ahead of the Mexican GP, Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost explained his dissatisfaction with the prospect of using 2015-spec engines but admitted the V6 rules and Red Bull's aggressive, anything-but-Renault approach meant the beggars simply couldn't be choosers, telling Autosport's Ian Parkes:

The manufacturers decide what we get, and in the end we have to be happy to get something.

If it's one year old, this is how it is. The influence we have in this case is not on a level we maybe would expect, or wish.

Therefore with this regulation and this situation we have to take what they offer us.

That Red Bull's lack of patience has paid off, though, has proved there is no need to settle for second best.

The collaboration with Illien was the best option available to the four-time world champions when it became clear Mercedes and Ferrari were reluctant to offer their engines, and Red Bull have emerged from a possibly disastrous predicament in a reasonably promising position.

They must help Toro Rosso do the same before it's too late, before the Red Bull B-team becomes Ferrari's plaything.

The spectre of Singapore continued to hang over Scuderia Toro Rosso as Formula One arrived at Suzuka for last weekend's Japanese Grand Prix, but Carlos Sainz Jr was insistent that the past was firmly in the past.

Just four days earlier, a team-orders row appeared to break out at the Red Bull B-team after Max Verstappen refused to follow the pit wall's instructions to gift eighth place to Sainz in the latter stages of the Marina Bay race, as reported by Sky Sports' Mike Wise.

Yet, despite being subjected to the ultimate insult by his team-mate and denied the chance of securing his best-ever finish in F1—being freed by Verstappen would have allowed him, on fresher tyres, to pressurise seventh-placed Sergio Perez—Sainz was adamant any issues had been resolved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fs8ceFQQRM

And that his bond with Verstappen—which began with a "two-hour conversation" ranging from racing cars to girls during last year's post-season test in Abu Dhabi, as they told the 2014 Autosport Awards ceremony—remained unbroken.

He told Motorsport.com's Pablo Elizalde:

Everything is OK. It has all been discussed, it has all been clarified. 

I think both have no problem with anyone, and I think it was more the team and Max who had to clarify things between them.

It has been done as far as I know, and everything should be normal here.

My approach will not change. I now know more what Max is about.

He like to plays a bit more maybe the bad boy role, and I kind of knew it, but he has now demonstrated this. But it will not change.

Sainz's maturity, his refusal to allow team orders pester him all the way from Singapore to Suzuka and, in particular, his assessment of his team-mate's character offered an insight into why his maiden season in F1 has exceeded all expectations.

Alongside the most exciting talent in a generation—even before he drove a grand prix car for the first time, Red Bull advisor Dr Helmut Marko told the official F1 website how Verstappen was reminiscent of Ayrton Senna—there was a risk that Sainz would be eaten alive by the teenager this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kcG00Mh5MM

Yet the Spaniard's awareness—his ability to recognise Verstappen's determination to establish an uncompromising reputation and his humility to adjust accordingly—seems to have steeled him to the point where he expects his team-mate to make bold, on-track statements in an effort to prove he's no conventional racing driver.

Such an approach means he doesn't take it as personally or react as emotionally as a lesser, more naive driver might on the occasions Verstappen tries to reinforce his ruthlessness, allowing Sainz to effectively stifle the hype surrounding the boy wonder.

That, after all, is why Sainz was able to drag his car to fifth on the grid in Spain less than two months after Verstappen supposedly walked on water to sixth in qualifying in Malaysia. It is why, in Singapore, he overtook Romain Grosjean with a forceful move at Turn 1 just seconds after Verstappen muscled his way past the Lotus.

And it is why, for much of this season—and despite a 20-point difference between the pair in the drivers' standings—it has been impossible to worship one Toro Rosso driver without revering the other.

They have, essentially, been one and the same.

In recent weeks, however, Verstappen has established a certain superiority over Sainz, to the point where it is increasingly difficult—and borderline unfair—to continue to regard the rookies as equals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL1xX5Zz5M0

Since his worst weekend of the season at Silverstone, where he failed to reach Q3 and spun into the gravel trap after just three laps of the race, Verstappen almost seems to have made it his mission to do something spectacular in every grand prix.

From securing his best finish of fourth in Hungary to those surges from the rear of the field in Belgium, Singapore and Suzuka, Verstappen has single-handedly set new standards for young racing drivers.

While Sainz has suffered misfortune over that period—retiring with mechanical failures at the Hungaroring and Spa, slowing with a temporary gearbox glitch in Singapore—mistakes have crept into his driving, with the Spaniard making costly errors in each of the last three races.

YELLOW FLAGS as Sainz hits the wall: "Sorry guys, sorry" #Quali #SingaporeGP #F1NightRace pic.twitter.com/UFXDuW826f

— Formula 1 (@F1) September 19, 2015

Today it was me who made a mistake and missed on a potential P8. Learn from mistake and come back stronger! Great car guys! @ToroRossoSpy

— Carlos Sainz (@Carlossainz55) September 27, 2015

At Monza, Sainz threw his STR10 into the gravel at Parabolica on Friday morning before incurring a five-second time penalty for exceeding track limits and gaining a number of positions at the start of the race.

In Singapore, meanwhile, he clouted two crash barriers in the space of 24 hours—the second incident costing him a seventh Q3 appearance of 2015—and in Japan, he collided with a bollard marking the pit-lane entry after, as he told Toro Rosso's official website, misjudging the behaviour of the car ahead.

Although Sainz is unlucky that his downturn in form has come at a time Verstappen has progressed to the next level, this point of the season—as F1 moves from its European heartland to "flyaway" circuits, where rookies traditionally have little or no experience—was always bound to be the time when the differences between the pair became distinguishable.

Verstappen's measured approach to a weekend, gradually building his speed and growing in confidence as each session passes, is proving superior to Sainz's hard-charging, on-the-edge style, and the Spaniard is in need of a solid result at next weekend's Russian Grand Prix.

The two long straights at the Sochi Autodrom, where Mercedes-powered cars were classified in the top-five positions in 2014, will hardly flatter Toro Rosso's eternally flawed Renault engine. But, in a sense, an event with his team slightly under the radar and with limited expectations is exactly what Sainz needs in his struggle against Verstappen.

For him, Russia is about more than getting his season back on track. It is about more than experiencing a clean, trouble-free weekend, returning to Q3 and adding a point or two to Toro Rosso's tally.

It is about proving that his team-mate is, indeed, human. 

Sainz needs to arrest the phenomenon that is Max Mania before it overwhelms him.

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Fernando Alonso, as ever, kept his cards close to his chest. Valtteri Bottas was looking forward to heading back home to Finland and a month with "no travelling." 

Marcus Ericsson? Five days in Croatia would do the trick.

Daniel Ricciardo spoke of working "on this tan" in St. Tropez, presumably referring to the holiday resort and not the stuff you'd find in a bottle on the shelves of Boots. Rob Smedley, meanwhile, seemed thrilled at the prospect of being dragged to Disney World by the kids.

Toto Wolff and Eric Boullier, for very different reasons, were counting down the minutes before they could switch off their phones and forget the world. Adrian Newey discussed his imminent 10-day visit to Seychelles, the kind of trip you would expect of a multiple championship-winning designer enjoying semi-retirement.

And poor, poor Paddy Lowe explained how he would spend three weeks kicking his heels, making a nuisance of himself and waiting for his wife to arrive home from work.

The video produced by the official Formula One website at the beginning of the summer break, in which several paddock figures revealed their holiday plans, humanised those who live in the most dehumanising of environments, who become cardboard cutouts when plunged into press conferences and who are known, principally, as names on a page. 

Trip to the Seychelles or kicking back with friends? What #F1 folk do in the summer break

➥ http://t.co/WjUTvCY9eQ pic.twitter.com/CKVHdffg6C

— Formula 1 (@F1) August 3, 2015

It offered a timely reminder that there is more to life than podiums, points and championship positions, that these people have families, partners, children and commitments ranging far beyond those with whom they travel to hotels and racetracks around the globe.

Most fascinatingly, though, it revealed how they unwind from the day job, where they find relief and how they escape the F1 bubble.

It was, then, with interest that you listened to how Max Verstappen, as the youngest-ever driver in F1 history, would spend his very first mid-season break.

Having not only made it to the pinnacle of motorsport but secured his best-ever result with fourth place in July's Hungarian Grand Prix, surely he would make up for the time he lost when forging his racing career as a child and spend four precious weeks living as a normal 17-year-old?

No chance. 

"(I will be) spending a lot of time with friends and I like go-karting," he said in the video, "so for sure I will spend a lot of time building up go-karts and driving them myself."

Happy with the summer break. #sun #sea #holiday pic.twitter.com/LVkaqJtOQ3

— Max Verstappen (@Max33Verstappen) August 10, 2015

With the exception of Esteban Gutierrez, who performed a street demo in Mexico City ahead of November's race, Verstappen was the only participant whose plans remotely included motor racing. 

For him, Formula One is not a profession but a hobby, and time spent away from a circuit is, to all intents and purposes, time wasted.

His enthusiasm to spend time on his vocation, when his rivals and peers were all going on their vacation, was the latest indication that Verstappen is destined for great things. Despite possessing all the natural talent a driver could wish for, he still dedicates his weeks off to constructing and driving something in an everlasting pursuit of self-improvement.

Yet, before he was released for the summer and let loose on his karts, Verstappen had an extracurricular activity to take care of.

On the weekend F1's reigning world champion was found following a pop singer around Barbados, Verstappen, per Motorsport.com, was driving in and out of the pit lane at Imola.

Scuderia Toro Rosso's decision to reserve one of their two allocated "filming days" until the in-season period—when most other teams tend to stage theirs during winter testing—could give them a huge advantage in this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, where a new race-start procedure will be introduced.

As reported by Motorsport.com's Adam Cooper, the changes will lead to an overhaul of the clutch bite-point regulations, preventing changes to the bite point from the moment the cars leave the garage until after the start of the race and banning the teams from guiding their drivers over team radio.

While it will remain unclear just how the new procedure will affect the drivers until the grid forms at Spa-Francorchamps, AP Racing's Steve Bryan is convinced there will be a significant change to the nature of race starts, telling Peter Windsor in the September 2015 print edition of F1 Racing magazine:

I think it will be a little more hit-and-miss at Spa. Until Spa, the engineers have had the opportunity to do quite a few bite-point "learns" through the course of a weekend; they can then get the driver to trim those after they've left the pitlane. From Spa onwards, the engineers won't be able to do that any more. There will be no external adjustment of the bite point. The driver can still trim it but the team can't advise him over the radio how to do that.

Having had only 10 races to grow accustomed to the previous start protocol, it was probable that Verstappen would have been among those hurt most by the sudden change of rules.

Yet those hours spent stopping and starting at Imola, as his competitors hit the beach, mean he will be among the best-prepared drivers in Belgium.

Despite the circuit suiting Verstappen's organic driving style, and his previous record at Spa—he won all three Formula Three races at the venue in 2014—the Belgian GP should, in theory, be a difficult weekend for Toro Rosso, who continue to be restrained by the shortcomings of Renault's power unit.

The accidental masterstroke that was their second filming day, however, will give the team a boost and ensure Verstappen will be the driver most worth watching at the start, the defining element of any Belgian Grand Prix.

From the moment he was confirmed as a Formula One driver 12 months ago to his performance in Hungary, the boy wonder has hinted that experience counts for nothing in modern-day motorsport.

But when those five red lights go out at Spa, Verstappen—of all people—will prove a little preparation and know-how can do no harm.

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On the same weekend that 17-year-old Max Verstappen finished fourth in the Hungarian Grand Prix—directly ahead of double world champions Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton—he said he hoped to get his driver's licence during the Formula One summer break, according to the Press Association (h/t the Guardian).

To describe Verstappen's rise as meteoric would be cliche and also inaccurate. Meteors flash brilliantly and quickly through the sky and then disappear forever. And while Verstappen is brilliant and quick on a race track, he is showing no signs of disappearing. Quite the opposite.

Despite arriving at Toro Rosso with just one season of single-seater experience, Verstappen has looked right at home at the top level of motor racing—almost as though he was born there (his father, Jos, was racing for Tyrrell in the Luxembourg Grand Prix two days before Max's birth).

Before the Hungarian race, it had been nearly seven years since a Toro Rosso driver finished as high as fourth in an F1 race.

Daniel Ricciardo, promoted to Red Bull last year after two seasons at the Italian sister team, never finished higher than seventh. Jean-Eric Vergne, signed as a Ferrari test driver this year, had one sixth-place finish in his three years at Toro Rosso.

The last driver to finish fourth for Toro Rosso was Sebastian Vettel, at the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, where he nearly handed the drivers' title to Felipe Massa after passing Hamilton late in the race. Vettel, then 21 years old, was promoted to Red Bull the following season and won four straight championships from 2010 to 2013.

Is Verstappen on a similar trajectory?

It's not supposed to be this easy. A teenager who can't legally drive down the street isn't supposed to jump into one of the most advanced race cars in the world and start beating drivers 10 years older with hundreds more races on their resume.

Searching for Verstappen's comparables (as they say in baseball) is not easy. Kimi Raikkonen entered F1 after just 33 car races, but he was already 21 years old (and presumably had a driver's licence). Vettel was 19 when he made his F1 debut, although he already had four years of single-seater experience, including two as an F1 test driver.

After driving in the Florida Winter Series in early 2014, Verstappen made his Formula Three debut. He finished second in his third race and won his sixth. Ultimately, he won 10 times in 32 starts, scoring 16 podium finishes and coming third in the overall standings.

In Vettel's first season of F3, after two years in Formula BMW, he won zero times in 20 races.

Of course, Vettel also produced a stunning win during his first full F1 season, at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix—the only podium finish in Toro Rosso's history.

"We can still hardly believe that we scored so many points—and even won a race!" Vettel told the official F1 website at the end of that season. "It’s phenomenal." 

No one expects that of Verstappen (nor was it expected of Vettel at the time), but if the young Dutch driver continues to produce strong results, he will find a place at a team higher up the grid soon enough. Perhaps not next year, but it will happen.

At this point in his career, developing Verstappen's skills properly, rather than quickly, is the key. His father was thrown into the deep end in his first F1 season, racing with Michael Schumacher for Benetton. Although the elder Verstappen finished on the podium twice, he never drove for a top team again.

"I'm in a good environment here," the younger Verstappen told Autosport's Ben Anderson and Pablo Elizalde last year. "It's more of a junior team so they are really there to prepare young drivers, so I think it's much better than how my dad started."

Still, if Verstappen junior keeps impressing, it will be difficult to hold him back.

Ferrari have already shown interest in Ricciardo, according to Autosport's Ian Parkes and Matt Beer, which could lead to a vacancy at Red Bull. And the team has already shown a definite preference for promoting from within. When Vettel left for Ferrari last year, then-20-year-old Daniil Kvyat was quickly slotted into the empty seat.

Another season at Toro Rosso would not hurt Verstappen, though. He will have more opportunities there to learn by trial and error, rather than living up to the expectations of the big team.

And the expectations for Verstappen are already sky-high, with Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko comparing him to Ayrton Senna before Verstappen had ever driven an F1 car, according to the official F1 website (via ESPN).

Nothing seems to rattle the young Dutchman, though: not a heavy crash at Monaco, not comparisons to one of the sport's all-time greats and not lining up on the grid with five world champions around him.

At just 17, who knows what his limits are?

Verstappen could be the next Vettel—a multiple world champion—or not. The only thing you can say for sure, given what he has achieved so far, is that it would be foolish to place any limits on his potential.

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Max Verstappen is only 17 years old, but he's already one of the best drivers in the world.

The Dutch racer finished fourth in the Hungarian GP on Sunday and has scored 22 points for Toro Rosso Renault during his debut season in F1. Toro Rosso" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuderia_Toro_Rosso">

He has also done all that without a driving license. 

However, he hopes that will soon change.

Per the Press Association, via the Guardian:

Verstappen, who turns 18 in September, will now use the four-week summer break to brush up on his road skills for his driving test. "I'm doing my lessons in the summer break and then will take my test around my birthday in September," he added.

"With the F1 schedule it has been difficult to fit everything in so I’ve had to wait for the break. You need a minimum six or seven hours driving under the laws in Belgium, where I live – and I hope that’s all I need. We’ll see."

As long as he curbs his "need for speed," we are backing him to pass.

[Guardian]