Honda plans to spend all tokens on upgrades

Honda plans to keep developing its current power unit throughout the season and wants to spend its final tokens as soon as possible.

The Japanese engine manufacturer has introduced two upgrades so far this year, with a new turbo being introduced in Canada and an internal combustion engine (ICE) update ahead of the British Grand Prix. Those developments have left Honda with 10 tokens to spend on further upgrades this season and Yusuke Hasegawa, Honda's head of F1 project, says the sooner it can use them the better.

"We are working on developments for updates all the time," Hasegawa told F1i. "However, we are not sure at which race we can implement the updates because we need to balance performance with reliability.

"Once we can confirm that, there is no reason for us to wait, we will put them in as soon as we can. We have 10 tokens left for the 2016 season, so our goal is to use all of it within this season."

Having only returned to F1 last year Honda has made strong progress in 2016, with Carlos Sainz saying the power unit is already better than the Ferrari engine was in its second season. Hasegawa is pleased to be earning praise from other drivers but says Honda's target is to erase the deficit completely.

"I am flattered that he would see Honda in that way, but I don’t know if I should feel happy to hear that we have finally surpassed the level of last year’s engine.

"I think everyone at Honda is doing a great job, improving at a significant rate, learning quickly and applying what needs to be done. All our engineers are highly motivated to do the job right."

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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.