Scuderia Toro Rosso STR13

The STR13 made its competitive début at the 2018 Australian Grand Prix and is the first car built by Scuderia Toro Rosso to use a Honda engine after the team agreed to end its engine partnership deal with Renault to allow the French manufacturer to partner McLaren. In September 2017, McLaren Honda announced they were terminating their partnership with effect from the close of the 2017 season. During negotiations to secure a new supplier, Renault disclosed that they did not have the capacity to supply McLaren whilst meeting their commitments to customer teams Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso. As part of a discussion between Renault, McLaren, Toro Rosso and Red Bull, Toro Rosso announced it would end their customer relationship with Renault and instead form a factory works partnership with Honda in a deal lasting through to 2021.

The car featured a blue livery with red accents across the side of the car. At the United States Grand Prix, the team was sponsored by the fast food chain restaurant KFC, later the team was trolled as Pollo Rosso ("Red Chicken") on Twitter.

In a departure from the last three seasons with McLaren, at pre-season testing in Barcelona, Honda showed significant progress with its power unit. On the first day, Brendon Hartley completed 93 laps without any issues. On the second day, Pierre Gasly completed 82 laps, the third highest tally, again with no issues. At the close of the first test, Toro Rosso topped the total mileage charts, with Pierre Gasly completing 147 laps on the final day. This showed that Honda with Toro Rosso had completed more laps in week one than Honda had completed with McLaren in the entire test fortnight in 2017. Following the close of testing, Hartley claimed the Honda PU was easier to drive and felt more powerful than the units supplied by Renault at the end of last season.

Following a PU failure in Gasly's car during the Australian Grand Prix, Honda revealed he had suffered from an MGU-H failure. Honda responded with a fix to the issue, making note that both drivers were still using the flawed 2017 MGU-H as the brand new system they had developed for the 2018 power unit was not going to be ready in time for the first round. In Bahrain, both drivers took the new MGU-H specification, however Gasly required an entire new PU due to collateral damage caused from the MGU-H failure in Australia.

After making significant progress with the PU mapping during the practice sessions at Bahrain, Pierre Gasly managed a 6th place during qualifying which he was able to turn into a 4th-place result during the race. This was the highest finishing position for Honda since returning to F1 in 2015.

At the Canadian Grand Prix, Honda debuted its Spec 2 PU. The update was praised by driver Gasly who noted it was immediately more driveable and punchier than the previous iteration. Comparisons in lap time during practice between the previous unit and the updated unit were showing a near 0.5-second improvement at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

After several lacklustre performances, Toro Rosso said they were trying to figure out their entire package with correlation issues on the aero updates and even Honda's upgraded unit. Red Bull's race director Christian Horner announced that Red Bull Racing had signed a 2-year engine supply deal with Honda starting from 2019 to replace Renault.

Honda's F1 Technical Director, Toyoharu Tanabe, made mention that Honda's PU upgrade plan for 2018 was on track and going well. After showing promising pace amongst the midfield with strong finishes at both the Belgian and the Hungarian Grand Prix, German publication Auto Motor und Sport released a report claiming they had calculated an estimate for the power figures of each manufacturer using the latest GPS data gathered from Monza. The data revealed Honda's Spec 2 PU, which debuted in Canada, to produce 715 hp without electrical assistance.

At the Russian Grand Prix, Honda debuted their much-anticipated Spec 3 PU in the practice sessions. Initial comments from the drivers were highly promising, both describing a noticeable jump in outright power. At the Japanese Grand Prix, STR made the competitive debut with the brand new Spec 3 unit. Honda claimed to have made even further improvements since the last GP. The results on track reflected the claims, with qualifying proving to be one of Honda's best results since returning to F1, both cars making it to Q3 to place 6th and 7th respectively.

Toro Rosso finished ninth in the Constructors' Championship, scoring just 33 points throughout the whole season - the team's worst season since 2012.

In January 2018, the team announced that their Head of Aerodynamics, Brendon Gilhorne, would be leaving the team.

In 2020, Yuki Tsunoda test drove the STR13 in AlphaTauri AT01 livery at the Imola Circuit, prior to his debut with the team.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus: a Wikipedia article on the Scuderia Toro Rosso STR13. No external sources were consulted.