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Honda avoided high fuel consumption repeat in Baku

Honda did not suffer a repeat of its high fuel consumption problems during the Grand Prix of Europe as it showed "better than expected" performance.

The Canadian Grand Prix saw Fernando Alonso hampered by high fuel consumption, with Honda's head of F1 project Yusuke Hasegawa admitting Alonso's pace was hurt by the need to save fuel from a very early stage. While the Baku City Circuit was expected to provide a similar test, Hasegawa says Honda performed better on that front.

“I think it was better than expected," Hasegawa said. "We thought that we were very much in trouble, especially in the race on the straight, but because we were using lower downforce settings and the drivers were utilising the tow position very much I think they did a very good race.

“The power unit is exactly the same as it was in Canada. I didn’t analyse the telemetry but fuel consumption is better which is similar to what we expected, which is good. But I think it was because of the lower downforce settings and utilising the tow position.

“As a matter of fact I don’t think both drivers had a lot of fuel saving. Maybe a couple of laps they did but I don’t think they did.”

And Hasegawa says Honda can take some credit for the improvement in fuel saving since the start of the season as a result of recent power unit upgrades.

“Yes we did, because we updated the turbine so recovering the energy and everything is getting better. So that helped very much. We can save fuel because we can use electricity instead of that.”

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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.