Honda talk up quali mode as Red Bull look to end Monza drought

Honda hope that its new engine will help Red Bull close the gap to Ferrari and Mercedes in qualifying more regularly.

Alexander Albon will lead the charge for Red Bull on Saturday at the Italian Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen set to start at the back of the grid due to taking on Honda's latest power unit.

Albon had use of the spec-4 model in Belgium last week, fighting from 17th on the grid to fifth at the chequered flag.

Red Bull have not been on the podium at Monza in the V6 Hybrid era, as previous struggles for pace with Renault hamstrung them, but Honda hope that the trend may start reversing starting this year.

Honda F1 chief Toyoharu Tanabe told Autosport: "Our new Spec 4 worked properly, the result from the data shows as we expected.

"At the moment we are happy, we will analyse the data and try to optimise the calibration to improve performance as much as we can for Monza."

On Honda's greater qualifying capacity, Tanabe added: "Other PU manufacturers have started to apply their latest specs. We haven't analysed the difference between their previous performance and [Spa].

"We will try to find out their improvement compared to our improvement but they don't wait for us.

"I hope we close the gap, but in reality from [Spa's] qualifying result we see a big gap between Ferrari and Mercedes - I don't know if they [Mercedes] had a problem in qualifying.

"I hope to close the gap, but it's not easy."

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