Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost reveals that team is fully funded for next season despite sale rumours, and is concentrating on getting the STR3 up to speed.

Scuderia Toro Rosso team boss Franz Tost has revealed that there will be no major upheaval in the ownership of the Italian outfit until at least the end of next season, despite ongoing rumours about potential buyers.

Various suggestions have been put forward regarding interest in Toro Rosso, which co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz has said that he will look to off-load should F1's 'customer car' debate not go the way of the smaller teams, with British F3 and World Series team Ultimate Motorsport rare among those in openly stating that it is talking with the team.

Even as Red Bull driver David Coulthard was being linked - and denied - a possible involvement when he retires from the top flight, Tost announced that he had been given assurances about the immediate future of the team, which he hopes will allow its staff to focus on turning the new STR3 into a regular points threat.

"The rumours regarding the sale of the team, when they grew stronger again earlier this season, did have an effect on us - but only for a short time," he revealed in the build-up to this weekend's British Grand Prix, "If every week there is a story that the team will be sold, it is not so funny for the employees.

"But the message we have from Dietrich Mateschitz is clear - that, for 2009, everything will remain stable, not just in terms of employment, but also in terms of the budget. Then, from 2010, we will see what happens."

The Austrian has been impressed with the way the team has raised its game so far this season, having started the campaign with the ageing STR2B until the STR3 could be brought on stream from Monaco onwards.

"At the moment, the team is stable," he confirmed, "We are pushing hard, taking one step at a time and we have improved our performance. After half a season, we now have a team that has better stability and increased co-operation between the different elements which means the team is getting better all the time, although we are still in a situation where we are recruiting new staff. But this is not a job advertisement!

"How well the car performs is the result of all the different departments within the team, not just the technical department but the whole organisational structure of the team and down to the detail of how the mechanics build the car. At this point in the season, I can see the people now pay more attention to detail and this is the first step to improving performance and we are working in the right direction.

"Our co-operation with Red Bull Technology has always been good, even if we are competing with Red Bull Racing and both teams are made up of very competitive racers. I can only say thank you to Red Bull Technology, because the people there around Adrian Newey have done a tremendous job, as we can see from the STR3. Unfortunately, the new car was a bit late - if it had been finished a month earlier, allowing us more testing time to acquire more data, our performance could be better now."

Technical director Giorgio Ascanelli shares Tost's appreciation of the work that has gone into producing the STR3, but admits that the team could have capitalised more on getting the older car ahead of its newer rivals at the start of the year.

"We had decided to start the season with a modified version of the '07 car and on balance, we have no regrets," the Italian insisted, "Currently, we are just one point short of our total for the whole of last year, so we must have done something right!

"I don't regret any decisions we took but, in the early part of the season with STR2B, we picked up fewer points than we should have done. This was not because we were using the old car, but rather it was down to the way we ran it and an unexpected reliability issue which was due to problems on quality control from a supplier. All the evolution components we fitted to the STR2 completed big mileages in winter testing and, when we came to the races, they then threw up some difficulties. Nevertheless, we picked up two points in the first five races using this car.

"The STR3 is much better. Introducing it once the season was underway was the wise choice, although its introduction has not been painless. We suffered a significant lack of parts, which delayed the introduction of the new car from Turkey to Monaco - but I think, as I've said before, that we were brave, mad and clever to launch the car in Monaco, because it did pay off.

"We handled a difficult situation in terms of parts rather well, and this weekend at Silverstone should be the first race where we have sufficient parts to race at a decent level. One side effect of this will be that our drivers will feel freer to take a few more risks because, up until now, they have been very mindful of our parts availability situation. I hope they will now be more daring and consequently go faster!

"We are not yet where we should be with the new car. The last race in France produced a good qualifying and race, but I feel that neither our drivers nor we engineers have yet taken the best out of the car. We still have a steep learning curve and there is more to come. This is partly due to the fact that we adopted a significant aero upgrade for the Magny Cours race having only had the briefest of tests in Barcelona. It changed the car quite significantly and we are still learning how to get the most out of the new package.

"We have reached the point in the season where we are already working towards the 2009 car. However, before then, there is the small matter of the remaining ten races to deal with. Of the coming circuits, the high speed ones favour us a bit more, so we should be alright everywhere except Hungary.

"So far this year, we have scored points in races where there have been unusual incidents involving frontrunners. At the moment, we still need these sorts of situations to pick up points, but the big difference between Scuderia Toro Rosso now and in the past is that, now, when those situations have arisen, we have taken them. This year, there have been three chances and we took them all. Last year, out of three chances, we only took one. We are more mature as a team, but much will depend on how our nearest rivals progress over the second half of the season."

Despite the problems with the cars, and four first-lap exits in the first four rounds of the year, Tost feels that the performances produced by rookie tandem Sebastian Vettel and Sebastien Bourdais has been on a par with expectation.

"The drivers have so far performed as I had expected, given that both of them have very little F1 experience," he reasoned, "Vettel has pretty much jumped into F1 after a very short racing career.

"With the current very high level of performance from all the drivers on the grid, you can't just come into this category and show the others how to drive. A young driver needs three years until he understands what F1 is about - it's not just driving the car, he needs to understand the whole environment, the engineering, the marketing, the press and bring all these elements together to build up the complete picture to understand when to do what.

"On this level, I am very happy with both our drivers. Vettel is doing a very good job because we can see his learning curve is increasing and he is getting better and better and I am convinced that, in the next few races, we will see the results of this. Bourdais had a fantastic start in Melbourne and he has also had some other good races. He too is improving and we can expect to see more good races from him."