Honda now 'ahead of Toro Rosso' - Hasegawa

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Honda Formula One boss Yusuke Hasegawa has said that steady progress on the Honda power unit means that they are now faster that the 2015-specification Ferrari engine powering the Toro Rosso cars.

"I think our performance was a reasonable one. I think we were just behind the top three teams and I think our race pace is good," said Hasegawa, reviewing last weekend's Singapore Grand Prix.

"I expected we would get a very good race, but still that means after the top three teams."

Even so, the two Toro Rosso cars out-performed both McLarens in qualifying at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, with Fernando Alonso starting from ninth and Jenson Button missing out on making it into Q2.

“I haven’t analysed the data but if that’s the truth then it means the Toro Rosso chassis is very good," conceded Hasegawa, who acknowledged that the Honda remained some way behind the current Ferrari and Renault units in terms of power and performance.

"We believe the Honda engine is a little bit better than the old Ferrari engine, so Toro Rosso’s chassis is very suited to this circuit, I think," he added, while still remaining hopeful that the McLaren will beat the Red Bull sister team to sixth place in the constructors championship over the remaining six races of 2016.

"Both drivers struggled in all the free practices this weekend, but thankfully the car had much improved since qualifying to have a good, steady race pace.

"It’s obvious that Fernando made a very good job of the start so he jumped up four places to fifth, which is very good. But despite that his race pace was very competitive I think.

"I am pleased that it was a good result for Fernando and the team. We were able to show our pace in the race and finish behind the top three teams as best of the rest.”

"Jenson was unlucky to be involved in an incident at the start [which] led to a gradual decrease in pace and we eventually had to retire the car."

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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.