Gasly confident Honda has made winter gains

Pierre Gasly says he is confident that Honda has made improvements to its power unit over the winter after driving it throughout the first week of testing.

Honda will power Red Bull in 2019 after spending the 2018 campaign with its junior squad Toro Rosso. Gasly has one year of Honda experience under his belt already, as he spent last year with Toro Rosso, which was his first full year in Formula 1.

This season, he makes the jump up into Red Bull, replacing Daniel Ricciardo who has joined Renault on a two-year deal.

Although Honda has been behind the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari since its return to F1 in 2015, Gasly is confident that the Japanese manufacturer has made steady progress over the winter break.

"So far it’s been it’s been really good," he said. "I think we haven’t pushed it flat out but already you can feel the performance has increased. That’s the main thing, and reliability we had no issue at all.

"Also looking Toro Rosso I think it looks really promising. So I think only good news from these four days we just need to keep working. The orders are really fast we saw as well. But at the moment we are testing a lot of things on our car and now we need to understand what works best."

Gasly will jump back into the RB15 this week on Tuesday and Thursday, while teammate Max Verstappen hits the track on Wednesday and Friday, the final day of on-track action before the Australian Grand Prix.