It's a big year for...Toro Rosso's newbies

Take your pick from the following clichés: sink or swim; take the rough with the smooth; it's a dog-eat-dog world. Whatever one you chose then rest assured you're right, as all the options accurately apply to the situation of Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne on the eve of the 2012 season.

On the one hand, the duo have the enviable opportunity of a lifetime; on the other, the ousting of Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari is a brutal and rather bleak warning from recent history that the Toro Rosso newcomers' time in F1 will be swiftly cut short unless they can impress in a manner that neither of their discarded predecessors could.

It is, of course, an accepted truism that the modern-day version of F1 has no place for sentiment, nor time for acclimatisation. Toro Rosso, however, have taken that crudeness to an astonishing extreme, born of the very unique circumstances in which the team itself was created to be a test run for their Red Bull mother team. As Team Principal Franz Tost remarked, in coldly nonchalant fashion, as he reflected on the-surprising-but-not-surprising ousting of Buemi and Alguersuari, changing drivers is part of the Toro Rosso culture.

So Verge and Ricciardo cannot say they haven't been warned. Put simply, they must know that it's now or almost certainly never. Unless they can prove - based on the vague but fixed criteria set out by Helmut Marko, the Red Bull driver development chief who effectively hires and fires the line-up at Toro Rosso - that they have the capability to be "grand prix winners" and not just "grand prix drivers", their opportunity could be over in a flash.

Beating the other - the traditional yardstick by which F1 drivers are judged - will be essential but not sufficient to survive. What Verge and Ricciardo must demonstrate, in addition to superiority over the other, is star quality.

It's probably safe to assume that had Toro Rosso been a truly independent team then they would most likely have retained at least one of Buemi and Alguersuari - if not both - and sought to reap the rewards of their long-term investment. Yet their place in the wider Red Bull food chain means the team simply isn't permitted to work like that. Though their alumni are uniquely young in F1 circles, Toro Rosso is not allowed to be a finishing school. Instead, the Fanzea-based outfit acts as an experiment - which is the reason why Vergne and, to a lesser degree, Ricciardo have been brought in. They are not being tested on whether they are good enough for F1 and Toro Rosso at the present time, but on whether they are ready for a future with Red Bull in the years to come.

The smooth is that Toro Rosso give opportunities; the rough is that they have a zero-tolerance attitude towards what they consider to be failure. Good just isn't good enough. Remember: the only driver who has succeeded on their terms is the two-time, youngest-ever World Champion by the name of Sebastian Vettel. Everyone else has fallen short of a bar raised to the highest rung.

It's a moot point which driver faces the tougher challenge to fulfil Red Bull's Toro Rosso criteria . Ricciardo's task is equally formidable to Vergne's but heightened by his extra experience - he ran in eleven grands prix for HRT last season - and age - he's 22, whereas JEV is a year younger at 21. In succinct form, the Aussie has even less of an excuse, but also a potentially-critical advantage over his rookie team-mate with which to deliver the required superiority and star factor. Argue to infinity which position you'd prefer to be in...

On the side of both, meanwhile, is pedigree. Ricciardo's 4-2 defeat of the much more experienced Tonio Liuzzi in qualifying at HRT was reasonably comprehensive and better still when his own relative inexperience was factored in.

As for Vergne, he universally impressed in his three practice outings for Toro Rosso at the close of 2011 and was then utterly dominant in the young drivers' test at Abu Dhabi in November. Top of the timesheets at the end of each of the three days, his final time was two seconds quicker than any of his rivals could produce.

Yet such normal measurements of comparison don't apply at Toro Rosso. So while Vergne might have blitzed the opposition in Abu Dhabi, it was equally relevant to note that while his time was still half-a-second shy of the pole-position lap set by Sebastian Vettel in the same Red Bull car a week previously, it was also less than a tenth slower than that set by Mark Webber. Truly, he might be something special. But, as we've been keen to stress, either he or Ricciardo will need to be in order to survive.

Yet that can't be the final word or thought.

Lest we are drawn towards sympathy for two supremely-talented youngsters given an opportunity that no other youngster of equal talent in an identical circumstance would reject, the final summary must reflect the very strong likelihood that the winner of their special contest will be offered the opportunity to partner Vettel in 2013. With Webber potentially in the final season of his Red Bull career at least, the opportunity is either Vergne or Ricciardo's for the taking in a dog-eat-dog world.

All that is required from these young pups is a helluva bite.