Toro Rosso ‘convinced’ by ‘progressive’ Honda

Editor

Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost is "convinced" they have made a good decision in switching to Honda engines and is encouraged by their potential.

Tost was speaking to the assembled press at the Circuit de Catalunya, where Brendon Hartley had a very strong morning on the first day of testing by completing 72 laps – a count only beaten Nico Hulkenberg's 73 in the Renault.

The Honda engine will come under even more scrutiny this season with the penalty limit being reduced from four engines to three, but Tost is happy with the early signs shown by their new power unit partners despite years of turmoil.

“I don’t see any problems, the power unit is working quite well and I am convinced Honda has the capacity and the know-how to develop the engine from to a level that we will be there, where we expect to be and this is how it is,” Tost said.

“I see it as very, very positive because Honda have made a lot of progress in the last months on the reliability side as well as the performance side, so we are looking forward to the season.”

Tost also went on to praise the strength of relationship, saying both sides are doing all they can to ensure that a positive future is ahead.

He added: “I must say we have a really fantastic working relationship with Honda. We had very busy months, as you can imagine, in November, December, January and now February, and there were absolutely no problems.

“Also, from the communications side, as you know we at Toro Rosso started to prepare ourselves for this cooperation, we had a couple of lessons in Faenza on how to communicate with Japanese companies and with Honda.

"I think this was very useful also to get an idea of the way they think, because it’s a completely different culture and these seminars got very positive results and we have a really good relationship with Honda.

“It was a completely new start for Toro Rosso, as you can imagine, we’re kind of a works team, we are the only team that is working with Honda and this opened a lot of possibilities, especially on the technical side with the engine installation and so on.

"For Toro Rosso it’s a big advantage to work together with such a big company as Honda is."