Toro Rosso aren’t quite able to make sense of Honda’s new engine upgrade, one that was introduced in Canada and the one that finally sealed the deal for them to become Red Bull’s engine supplier from the 2019 season.
While the upgrade details were enough to convince Red Bull to switch from Renault to Honda, Gasly is appalled by the crazy lack of straight line pace.
While Gasly did conceded that Honda are working pretty hard to iron out the imperfections, Honda and Toro Rosso are struggling for pure performance, something that should worry Red Bull.
“It’s more in terms of just pure performance and power from the engine, but I know they are working on it and they have a couple of ideas,” said Gasly.
“I just need to give them time to bring it to the track, but at the moment we still lose quite a lot in terms of straightline speed.
“We still have to understand exactly how to get the best out of the Spec 2 engine.”
Honda’s F1 technical director, Toyoharu Tanabe has confirmed that the Silverstone data isn’t quite encouraging.
“I cannot tell you exactly yes or not, but we are still working on the ICE [internal combustion engine],” he said as quoted by Autosport.com
“I hope we will have some update and improvement within this season.
“[On Gasly’s Silverstone] qualifying data we saw the performance difference on the straights.
“Of course we have here, where you can go full throttle [in corners], especially in qualifying.
“That gave us a hard time. It meant the performance difference here was more than at other circuits.” he added.
Hartley started from the pitlane in Silverstone and had to return to the pits after just one lap because of a part installation issue.
“While fixing the car we had an issue with the installation on the power unit side that caused an improper function,” explained Tanabe.
“We saw unusual data on the power unit side and we retired.
“I think the components are OK. We will check carefully for any damage.” he concluded.
