Has the Toro Rosso experiment failed?

All is not well at Scuderia Toro Rosso. Their latest driver, Jaime Alguersuari, might have made Formula One history by making his debut at 19 years and 125 days old, but his appointment and the exit of his predecessor, Sébastien Bourdais, betray a clear lack of direction within the Faenza-based team.

There are many reasons to be sceptical about Alguersuari's appointment, not least of which the €1 million that sponsor Repsol is said to be paying the team for his first two races. And there is an added problem in that Alguersuari has only two straight-line tests in Formula One behind him as he heads into this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix - hardly an ideal preparation for a career in the top level of motorsport.

Naturally the young Spaniard will be judged on his results, and rightly so. But there is tremendous pressure on his shoulders: already Toro Rosso's team principal, Franz Tost, has been indicating that there are no guarantees on the length of his contract. Rumours persist, too, that five-time WRC champion Sebastien Loeb may take his seat for the season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

If it is young talent Toro Rosso are looking for, Brendon Hartley would have been by far the better choice. He was Red Bull's official reserve driver for the first half of this season, and - more importantly - has real experience in an F1 car, having participated in off-season testing at Jerez alongside Buemi last December. The obvious conclusion can be that Alguersuari is intended as a short-term solution only, until a more experienced driver can be brought in - perhaps Takuma Sato, who tested with the team during the winter.

Indeed exactly why Bourdais should have been ousted at this juncture remains a mystery. The Frenchman had a contract in place for the rest of the year, and while his performances in 2008 may have been less than stellar - 4 points compared to then-team-mate Vettel's 35 - in 2009 he has not fared any worse than Buemi - 2 points to the Swiss's 3. He has not been helped by the machinery: until this weekend the STR4 has not received the updates granted to the RB5, and so has remained the only car on the grid without a double diffuser. But it appears he has been made a scapegoat for the team's poor performance.

A change in philosophy at the parent company may also be responsible. In 2008, Toro Rosso proved its worth as a racing team in its own right, regularly outperforming its bigger brother, Red Bull Racing. In 2009, however, it has become subservient once again, trialling out drivers in the hope that they will demonstrate their talent and graduate to the 'senior' team. But in its three-and-a-half-year history to date, only one of its four drivers has made such a switch: Sebastian Vettel. (Tonio Liuzzi actually made the reverse journey, from Red Bull to then-newly-acquired Toro Rosso, in 2006.) Whether this is enough of a return on the company's investment to make a second team worthwhile is debatable.

2008 was clearly an embarrassment for the senior Red Bull team, and one that - perhaps understandably - it does not want to repeat. It can no longer, therefore, allow Toro Rosso equal status. The danger in such an approach, however, is that the junior team will be reduced to a mere sideshow in the eyes of the parent company: an unwelcome drain on resources. Indeed as James Allen suggests, this is already happening: as budgets are being cut across the board, the parent company seems to be siphoning off funds to finance its more successful 'senior' team. The junior team, it has been decreed, must run on a junior budget.

This is a grave mistake, and the result is that Scuderia Toro Rosso now stands at a crossroads. If it is truly going to fulfil its original role as a 'rookie' outfit, then it must allow its drivers the necessary resources and equipment to be able to compete with the rest and so prove their skill and talent. Otherwise it becomes a pointless exercise. In the present situation, it is hard to imagine that Alguersuari can enjoy any more success - or have any more of a future in F1 - than Bourdais.

If, on the other hand, the parent company does not have the funds to run two fully-fledged F1 outfits, then perhaps the time has come to conclude that the Toro Rosso experiment has failed. The question must be asked: is it better financial sense to run a 'B' team in F1, or to support many young drivers through feeder formulae, as they are already doing through their Young Driver Development programme? Its hand may be forced by next year's regulations, which currently require every constructor to design and build its own car (presently Toro Rosso purchases their chassis from Red Bull Technologies). This would make Toro Rosso a far costlier operation; whether the Red Bull budget will extend to that remains to be seen.

The lesson is clear: either Red Bull needs to get serious about its 'junior' team, or consider dropping it entirely.

Photo reproduced under the Creative Commons Atrribution 2.0 license from an image uploaded to Flickr.com by Mypoorbrain.