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After trialling Honda's upgraded power unit during Friday practice in Sochi, Toro Rosso has opted to return to the older specification. Both Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley fitted the new engine to the car prior to the weekend, with Honda reporting an "encouraging" boost.
Gasly managed to finish in eighth place after the second practice session on Friday. However, the Red Bull junior squad has now decided to revert back to the previous engine specification. Honda will fit the new engine in again next weekend for its home race in Japan.
"Having studied all available power unit data after FP2, we realised that, although the performance was encouraging, there is still some work to do in some areas such as calibration and matching the power unit to the chassis,” said Honda chief Toyoharu Tanabe.
"So we have decided to revert to the older specification power unit on both cars for the rest of the weekend. We believe we can complete the work before the Japanese Grand Prix, so that we can run the new specification power units on both cars from then on.”
Grand Prix of Belgium
C. Sainz jr
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Replies (4)
Login to replycalle.itw
Posts: 8,527
A bit of a letdown, but it is what it is. And it makes sense to snatch the penalties for this race and use the older allocations at the same time, since it now is a lost race anyway, so I hope Honda will pull through in Japan.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
I wonder if Renault is pulling a similar strat with their spec C.
ajpennypacker
Posts: 2,475
Great job Honda once again.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Innit what test sessions are for though? Getting data on stuff, an retreating for a while if it needs more work? They are kinda still ahead of schedule.