Daniel Ricciardo now sees himself in a race with Toro Rosso team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne to be the first between them to become Formula One world champion.

On a busy day of car reveals, the duo on Monday unveiled the STR7 at the Circuito de Jerez in southern Spain, following on from Sauber in the morning and Red Bull's online launch early afternoon.

For Ricciardo, the Australian at least has 11 grands prix under his belt after going out 'on loan' to Hispania Racing at the end of last season.

As for Vergne, the Frenchman faces his rookie campaign after the team opted to axe Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari at the end of last year.

In effect, Ricciardo and Vergne are reunited again after joining Red Bull's junior driver development programme on the same day four years ago.

"It's nice we've both made it work," Ricciardo told Press Association Sport.

"That's a part of their (Red Bull's) programme, to bring us through from the juniors and into Formula One, and we've both succeeded in doing that.

"That's the first job done, and I guess we both want to be world champion, so it will be a race to get to that target as well.

"So far it's all been good. Each year in our career we have gone a step forward, and this is definitely a pretty obvious and big step towards hopefully the big one one day."

Ricciardo feels he at least has a slight edge on Vergne given the invaluable experience gained with Hispania, even if it was at the back of the grid.

"Having those 11 races last year was beneficial for me. I learned a lot and I believe I improved a lot during that time," said Ricciardo.

"It's a bit of a head start, that's obvious. But we both have quite a bit of testing now before the season begins, so he'll be able to catch up a little bit."

The STR7 is the third car to be designed and built by the team since they made the break away from being Red Bull's 'sister' marque.

In the past two years there has been improvement, with Toro Rosso ninth in 2010 and eighth last year, so further progression is an obvious requirement this year.

"In the last three years we've invested a lot of money to build up a good infrastructure," said team principal Franz Tost.

"We've invested in people, in machines, in CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and I hope the result will be good for this year.

"Tomorrow we go out for the first time with the new car and this is always something very special.

"I expect we will have a really good season. We have a new car, two new highly-skilled drivers, and I'm convinced both of them will do a very good job.

"Last year we finished eighth in the constructors' championship, so the goal for this year is to improve, to finish seventh, or if possible, in sixth position."