Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost says the points lost in the early part of the 2016 Formula 1 season “haunts” the team.
The Italian squad is currently seventh in the constructors’ standings, 19 points behind McLaren and 26 points ahead of Haas.
Tost believes reliability problems and the loss of Max Verstappen early in the year has cost the team points, particularly with a tough second part of the season.
“Step one was when Max Verstappen left for Red Bull Racing,” he explained to the official F1 website.
“That took away a lot of potential from the team. That does not mean that Daniil is not doing a fantastic job, but he had to recover. Then we had some engine failures that we didn’t expect.
“Next came our involvement in some incidents, like in Monaco when Carlos showed a real good performance and was in front of Perez before the pit stop – and after he had pitted he was nowhere – where clearly the team has lost his position.
“Then I always said that the second half of the season would be difficult, as there was no development on the engine – and now we are struggling with the pace. Now the points that we did not bag at the beginning of the season haunt us.
“But to be fair, even if everything had worked perfectly for us this season Force India were simply too strong – and also Williams. But P6 should have been possible, because McLaren are not so far ahead of us.”
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