Gasly claims Honda upgrade can get better

Gasly claims Honda upgrade can get better

Joas van Wingerden

Monday 8 October 2018 16:31

Pierre Gasly is confident that Honda's new power unit has plenty more performance to give after Toro Rosso's superb qualifying performance at the Japanese Grand Prix. Brendon Hartley and Gasly qualified sixth and seventh respectively at Suzuka, but left the race pointless.

Honda remain without a scoring race at their Suzuka home since returning to F1, despite a superb Saturday for Toro Rosso.

Article continues under video

Hartley was made to count the cost for a dreadful start which lost him several places, while Gasly was let down by strategy and ran out of tyres towards the end of the race, opening the door for Carlos Sainz to nick 10th from him.

Gasly revealed that Honda's engine upgrade was ahead of schedule in Suzuka, but is confident that it will reap rich rewards before long.

???????? #JapaneseGP - Race Results ???? pic.twitter.com/jlLO7RMwNU — Toro Rosso (@ToroRosso) October 7, 2018

"It's new so we still need to find out how everything works," he said. "They introduced it pretty early, ideally they would have liked to have more time on the dyno to test it.

"We are talking about a couple of tenths. If we had this then probably it would have put me a bit closer to Romain [Grosjean] and more in the fight.

"So I think it's looking really good. Still a few things to improve but as a first step, after discovering and exploring a bit the way the engine works I think there is some good potential in there."

MORE: Vettel wants Verstappen face-to-face after Suzuka crash
MORE: Verstappen gets extra punishment for Suzuka crash, nears race ban