Gasly looking for clearer picture of Honda progress

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Pierre Gasly says he's hoping that this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix will give Toro Rosso a clearer picture of how effective the latest upgrade to the Honda power unit actually is.

The Japanese manufacturer rolled out its first major upgrade of the year for the Canadian Grand Prix.

It was widely hailed a major step forward, and was a crucial factor in Red Bull's decision to end its 12-year partnership with Renault and opt for Honda power in 2019.

However the new unit has not yet translater to on-track success. Gasly finished in 11th place in Montreal, while his team mate Brendon Hartley was only 14th last weekend at Le Castellet.

In both races, the other Toro Rosso was eliminated by a first lap accident. While not engine related, it meant that the team wasn't able to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the new Honda components.

"This weekend is important for us to have answers about the performance from the new engine itself," the French driver told the media on Thursday. "Just to make sure it’s as good as we expected.

“We have also small upgrades on the chassis, which should be quite decent and a good step forward as well.

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"We should have the strongest car of our season so far," he added. "Hopefully we’re going to increase the performance and be able to close a bit on the top ten."

As for why it's taken this long into the season to start getting on top of its performance issues, Gasly said it was "complicated".

“Honestly, it’s never just a straightforward one answer," he said. "But I think we definitely expected to be stronger in Paul Ricard than what we were.

"It’s not only the engine," he insisted. "But it’s clear we had higher expectations than the performance we had in France.

“We think that on the set-up side probably we didn’t run with the correct wing - probably we should have found a better compromise.

“Some of that is understood and some of it is ongoing," he added. “There’s a lot of different factors. Some of which we understand quite well, some of which the aero update should help us this weekend.

“At the moment, we have a couple of ideas but it’s not completely clear," he commented. "It will be good this weekend to see if the gap is more similar to what we saw in Canada, or if we still seem to struggle.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.