Honda’s Toyoharu Tanabe credited Pierre Gasly for the Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda team’s strong performance at the Monaco Grand Prix, though mentioned they were happy to have another weekend of good reliability.
Honda switched from supplying the McLaren F1 Team to suppling Toro Rosso at the end of the 2017 season – a move that shocked most and led many to believe the Red Bull sister team would suffer a similar fate to McLaren. This hasn’t been the case though, and whilst Honda’s performance in last year’s Monaco Grand Prix wasn’t particularly strong – both McLaren cars failed to finish – Honda this year helped Toro Rosso to finish seventh with Pierre Gasly.
McLaren meanwhile, who have since swapped to Renault engines, saw Fernando Alonso retire due to engine issues and Stoffel Vandoorne finish outside the points in fourteenth.
Commenting after the race, Tanabe said that whilst most of the credit goes to Gasly, Honda were able to get the engine set ‘just right’ for the difficult street track.
“In today’s race, we maintained the momentum that we had in yesterday’s qualifying and finished higher than our grid position with Gasly, which is always a good thing in Monaco,” said Tanabe. “This was a very strong performance from the whole team, but most of the credit goes to Pierre, who drove a fantastic race.
“From the PU side, we were able to get our settings just right, including energy management and driveability specific for this unusual track. There’s not a lot more to add, except that we are pleased everything ran reliably yet again throughout the whole weekend.”
