Gasly believes Honda pace is promising

Pierre Gasly has been left satisfied by Honda's recent performances after proving it can fight for points. The Japanese manufacturer, who powers Toro Rosso, has endured a number of tough years in the hybrid era. 

Honda re-joined the sport as an engine manufacturer in 2015 with McLaren, but three years of off-the-pace running and unreliability led to a divorce. With Toro Rosso running with Honda this year, and Red Bull making the switch in 2019, Gasly says that the team can be encouraged by recent displays.

"I think it's [Honda’s performance] promising,” said Gasly. "With Budapest, we knew that it's a track that's a bit less power-sensitive and in a way it would make things a bit closer between everyone. Honda did a fantastic job in qualifying in the wet conditions. Driveability was great. Then again in the race, we didn't have any issues at all.

"It is the best way to motivate them and show them that we have potential and to push them forward, especially coming before the summer break, just to give a big boost to everyone. Hopefully we get more performance on their side for the second half of the season."

Red Bull has run with Renault engines since it entered Formula 1 in the mid-2000's. However, Renault too has had its issues since the hybrid era began in 2014, and next year the energy drink team will make the change to Honda power.

But its driver Max Verstappen isn't worried about how the engine will perform: "I don’t think they have had a lot of issues," he said. "Most of the time they have had a bad qualifying so it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference for them to take new components, so that is what they are doing.

"They still have quite a few races coming up to understand the package for next year and it is going to be a new engine. They learn from their mistakes, which is good. At the moment Daniel [Ricciardo] is having issues [with his Renault engine], so it happens on other brands as well not only Honda. I’m not too worried."

Fergal Walsh