Honda sees 'big advantage' in Toro Rosso using Red Bull rear end

Honda technical director Toyoharu Tanabe says the fact that Toro Rosso will use the same drive train as Red Bull Racing in 2019 will provide the Japanese manufacturer with a significant benefit.

The Faenza-based squad laid the groundwork for the senior bull outfit in 2018 by putting Honda's power unit to the test ahead of the Milton Keynes team's own adoption of the engine.

With both teams now supplied by Honda, Toro Rosso will receive its complete rear end design from Red Bull Racing's engineers this season, and the common componentry will make Honda's life much easier according to Tanabe-san.

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"I think it’s a big advantage," the Honda man told told Motorsport.com.

"We don’t need to communicate between one team and another team, or they ask us completely separately. We don’t have that situation.

"Of course, they have a slightly different design and we need to adapt to each team but it’s not a big specification change."

This season will see Honda supply two teams for the first time since its return to Grand Prix racing with McLaren in 2015. A situation that has logically required a boosting of its engineering resources.

"We are increasing people at the factory of course," said Honda motorsport boss Masashi Yamamoto

"And the other thing is trackside, we have to have twice as many people as this year. We have to have another assembly team for the race engines.

"Maybe for certain jobs we can share between both teams, but doubling the job, that means I will lose specialty – so having more people is a sensible idea."

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