F1: Honda to be Cautious With Engine Updates

Japanese engine supplier, Honda want to be cautious not to hurt reliability in pursuit of performance in next weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix. The Montreal F1 race will see a lot of teams bringing in updates to their engines so Honda will not be the only ones.

They currently supply engines only to the Toro Rosso F1 team after McLaren parted ways with them at the end of the previous F1 season. The last modification they conducted on the cars were after the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, with an MGU-H and internal combustion engine replacement.

Technical director, Toyoharu Tanabe stressed on the need for reliability. “So far, reliability looks stable but I think we need to be careful [to] not push too hard on the performance. We need balance. We have a lot of things to do and not many short-term solutions.”

“Most are long-term solutions. We develop something and then apply it to the engine, we need to have a reliability test. Any tiny thing to improve the performance, we need time”, said Tanabe.

Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly has had a good run in the F1 season so far, finishing an impressive 7 in Monaco. He said that he would want to see it in action before commenting on the upgrade. Gasly said, “I’ll wait until FP1 to see exactly what the difference is on the computer.”

“I’ve learned that in F1, it’s better to wait and see once you put the new parts on because sometimes it doesn’t work as well as you expect, sometimes it works better. But it can only go in the right direction, I think, so I’m really excited about this upgrade.”

Toro Rosso have looked good on circuits where engines run at low-speed and Honda look to be content with the driveability of the car. “Our engineers always communicate with the team and driver to improve their confidence for throttle application. Reliability, power and driveability are key points for engine. Of course power is important for lap time but the driveability has a big effect as well”, added Tanabe.