Honda explain source of greater power in 2019

Honda's F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe says that a breakthrough in its engine power in 2019 could not have been achieved without first cracking greater reliability.

Red Bull's gamble on ditching its title-winning supplier Renault for Honda largely paid off, with Max Verstappen securing career-high totals for race wins, poles and points in 2019 as he broke into the top three of the drivers' championship for the first time.

Verstappen was particularly fulsome in his praise for Honda's spec-4 power unit in 2019, which helped his late-season surge of form which landed victory in Brazil, in a three-race run of podiums to end 2019.

Honda's return to F1 with McLaren was characterised by poor performance and the routine sight of the Woking team's cars pulling over with engine failure, but Red Bull did not suffer an engine-related retirement across 2019, something Tanabe says was the crucial achievement.

"I believe we have learned what is a priority for qualifying, or how to win the race," Tanabe told Motorsport.com. "I'm asking Sakura on the Japan side to focus on some key points to improve. We learned a lot.

"On the other hand, reliability is not perfect enough this year, but our reliability is getting much better since last year. It means we can develop positive items, not a countermeasure test or bench test.

"We spent a lot of time on something that was a clean-up test [before].

"Now we can put more time to improve our performance. Then we can think about the more detail with each area."

Related

More F1 news

Latest F1 news

Nurburgring 24 Hours: Meet Max Verstappen's team-mates for iconic race this weekend

• 2 minutes ago

F1 News Today: Aston Martin announcement 'expected' as team reveal major upgrade package

• 39 minutes ago

George Russell's brazen F1 claim is already coming back to bite him at Mercedes

• 58 minutes ago

Inside Max Verstappen's radical preparation for Nurburgring 24 Hours race: No sleep for F1 star

• 1 hour ago

Red Bull placed on red alert as FIA president confirms multi-team ownership investigation

• 3 hours ago

F1 legend Lewis Hamilton in 'feels like home' emotional Mercedes reunion

• Today 12:57