Latest Honda Upgrade For Toro Rosso Could Give Red Bull Wings

Hondao introduced an upgraded engine in Russia, but even though they utilized them in practice, Toro Rosso chose to wait until the Japanese Grand Prix to use them in a race.

Despite having to deal with up-shift oscillations and finishing outside the points at Suzuka, Toro Rosso still had a very encouraging weekend, getting both drivers into Q3, with Hartley starting the race P6 and Gasly right behind him in P7.

During qualifying, the two Toro Rosso cars were quicker than the Force Indias and the Renault works team in terms of pure pace, and if the FIA hadn’t forced them to revert the post shift ignition settings to a previous setup, they might even had performed better during the race.

All “what if’s” aside, Toro Rosso definitely passed the test as far as straight line speed is concerned, as both cars proved visibly more difficult to overtake, with rivals requiring DRS activation in order to get by.

“Today’s result was disappointing, given our excellent showing in qualifying yesterday,” stated Honda F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe after the race. “Pierre ran in the points for much of the race, so it was unfortunate that he was unable to fight off Sainz in the closing stages and dropped down to eleventh.”

Of course, any improvement for Toro Rosso this year is also great news for Red Bull Racing, who will be switching to Honda power come 2019, when Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly will line up alongside Max Verstappen for the UK-based Austrian outfit.

The next four races on the calendar (US, Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi) will be very interesting for the Honda-powered Toro Rossos, as all of those circuits feature long straights and/or high-speed corners.