Toro Rosso had to call an early end to the first day of pre-season testing for Carlos Sainz Jr and their STR11, following a gearbox issue.
Sainz had completed 55 laps before the problem arose, but as a precaution they chose to pit the Spaniard for further investigation.
"We completed our build-up runs in the morning and everything was progressing quite well, with a decent number of laps completed before the lunch break," explained chief race engineer Phil Charles.
"Unfortunately, during one of the early runs this afternoon we saw something in the data that’s a little bit strange in the gearbox oil system, so as a precaution we decided to stop the car.
"We will now take our time to understand it and hope for an even better day tomorrow."
Depsite the problem, Charles was happy with how the day went considering the teams last-miniute switch from Renault to Ferrari power.
"Overall, we are pleased with today after a late decision on our power unit and fast birth of our new car. So to get to this point and run the car relatively successfully straight away is very pleasing and everyone in the factory should be proud of the big efforts made so far."
Sainz also had positive words following the opening day: "We were all obviously very much looking forward to today and it was a great achievement to drive out after not the easiest of winters," he said.
"The team has done a great effort and today was quite a decent first day. We managed to have a very clean morning and it was also being a smooth afternoon up until we suddenly had to stop the car… So we had to unfortunately call it a day, but up until then it was all going perfectly and I felt good in the car."






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