Honda dismisses power upgrade rumours as "not true"

Honda's F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe has insisted there has been no update to the performance of its power unit but ruled out the engines were being turned down earlier in the season for reliability concerns.

In recent races, Red Bull has begun to stretch its legs in a straight line, gaining up to three-tenths in the middle sector at Paul Ricard with a similar margin being made at the Red Bull Ring.

Lewis Hamilton has repeatedly questioned whether Honda's upgraded power unit, introduced in France, has upped the power output.

Asked if there was truth behind rumours that the reliability upgrades had resulted in an extra 15bhp being generated, Tanabe-san replied: "I am very happy if it is true, but it is not true.

"Under current regulations, any performance update is not allowed to be applied during the season. As a result, our second PU is the same as the first PU in terms of specification on the performance."

Asked if the sudden advantage was the cause of running a lower performance mode in the beginning of the season to fend off reliability concerns, he said: "No.

"If you compare GPS data, you can easily find the gap between Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault and Honda. That is the easiest way to find how to use our PU from the beginning of the season."

Honda gains a result of "hard work"

Tanabe-san revealed that the Japanese manufacturer, which will withdraw from F1 at the end of the season, has put in a huge effort to "understand" how its power unit functions since first being used in pre-season testing.

This understanding is what he attributes to the sudden improvement.

"The current performance improvement is as a result of the hard work from Honda and the teams," he added.

"Under the current PU regulation, we need to submit any changes... we are only allowed to change for reliability, for cost reasons and logistics.

"We need to submit the details to the FIA first and the FIA approves the changes. The FIA distributes the document to the other PU manufacturers, so we need to have approval from the other PU manufacturers to change any single part of the specification."

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