"Honda made another step forward with their PU"
F1 News
Franz Tost believes Honda have made another step forward with their Formula 1 engines ahead of the 2020 F1 season. The AlphaTauri boss reports the team of Pierre Gasly and Daniil Kvyat have finished a positive six days of testing.
Having fixed the majority of reliability issues, Honda can focus more on the power and performance from their engines. The 2020 season will mark the second season the Japanese engine manufacturer supply Aston Martin Red Bull Racing. Ahead of the first race, AlphaTauri boss says they've made further gains over the winter break.
"Honda made another step forward with the PU, improving both performance and reliability, which made our running smooth. I believe we had a strong pre-season thanks to the efforts from everyone in Bicester, Faenza, and Sakura, which resulted in an almost seamless test," Tost said.
No major issues
Despite having a day where both Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri broke down simultaneously, boss of Honda's F1 project reports no major issues.
“6 days of winter testing have now ended, and we were able to get through it without any major issues, completing a good number of laps with both teams. Overall it was a very positive session, going through many different tests on the PU and gathering lots of data," Tanabe said.
“769 laps with Scuderia AlphaTauri and 780 laps with Aston Martin Red Bull Racing means 1,549 laps and 7,211km in total for Honda and this is quite a respectable mileage. It is too early to talk about the competitiveness of both teams as everyone ran different programmes in varied conditions, such as track temperature, wind, humidity, which all have a significant impact on the modern F1 car. But we can say it was good preparation for the start of the season."