When translated from Italian, the name Toro Rosso simply means Red Bull, the team was formed after Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz bought Paul Stoddart's remaining shares in Italian team Minardi in 2005. Mateschitz struck a deal to part-own the team with ex-F1 driver Gerhard Berger; however Mateschitz regained total ownership in 2008.
2006 was a positive debut season for the team, which is commonly referred to as the junior Red Bull team. As the only team to retain a V10 engine, albeit a restricted one, the team regularly challenged Red Bull for points; Tonio Liuzzi scored the team's first points at Indianapolis.
In 2007 the team took over Red Bull's contract to use Ferrari V8 engines, but they had a poor start to the season with 13 retirements in the first ten races. American Scott Speed was used as a scapegoat and axed mid-season, and he was replaced by Sebastian Vettel. They showed a small improvement and both drivers recorded good finishes in the Chinese Grand Prix, bringing in eight points for the team.
The 2008 driver line-up was Vettel and four-time winner of the ChampCar World Series, but F1 rookie, Sebastien Bourdais. After a faltering start to the season the team went from strength to strength; Vettel took the team's first pole for the Italian Grand Prix and went on to win the race. Both drivers continued to score points in the latter part of the season, eventually beating their parent team to sixth in the constructors' standings.
In 2009 the team again had a slow start to the season with Bourdais and Sebastien Buemi struggling for performance. After nine rounds of the season Bourdais was replaced by 19-year-old Jaime Alguersuari, the youngest person to ever compete in an F1 race. Maintaining reliability but not pace left Toro Rosso to pick up the dregs of the points during the season - they finished last but with eight important constructors' points to their name.
