Buemi: Independence good for STR

Sebastien Buemi believes Toro Rosso has benefited from having to design its own car this year rather than using a reworked Red Bull chassis.With its dispensation to use customer' chassis from its parent team now having expired, STR has had to ramp up its technical resources to become a true constructor.Buemi admits he was initially very worried about whether the small Faenza-based squad would rise to the challenge, but has been pleasantly surprised by how well it has adapted so far.I have to say the team did a very good job they worked really hard and [technical director] Giorgio [Ascanelli] had to set up a completely different team, Buemi said in Bahrain on Thursday.We had to work in a completely different way, getting our own design and getting up to speed with the wind tunnel, which took us a very long time. At the moment we are looking a lot better. We are confident; until [the final test in] Barcelona we were quite competitive, so that's good.The STR5 bears a clear resemblance to its Red Bull-derived forebear, but Buemi says Toro Rosso was able to tailor it much more to its own requirements than in the past when it relied on hand-me-down designs.We started with last year's car and we did small updates in the areas where we were sure it was going to be better to do this or that, he explained.We didn't change completely the car we were lucky to have a good basic car, so that was important.We could improve quite a lot of small things, making it better for our engine, our gearbox, our [suspension] geometry and the way I like the car.The Swiss driver admits Toro Rosso's limited wind tunnel resources will inevitably restrict its ability to develop the car as the year goes on but feels that by carefully focusing on the biggest priorities it can still make progress.This is a bit of a question mark, but I'm quite happy, he said.We need to keep in mind that we have 30 people in the wind tunnel. There are teams that have 150 or 200 people, so we cannot achieve the same things.We need to do the very important things, where we think we can gain [the most] performance.Buemi reckons the team might well gamble on an unorthodox pit stop strategy in some races in a bid to break out of the midfield.It is possible we will go back to a GP2 kind of strategy, he said.For sure we will take a few more risks than a team fighting for victories or the championship.But we need to see where we are [in the order] exactly we don't really know that at the moment.I would love to take some risks in some races and see what happens, but we will see what the team decides.