F1 | Toro Rosso, Key reveals: “Honda has done an excellent job on the power unit”

At the end of the eight days of testing in Spain, James Key spoke about the excellent potential expressed by the Honda power unit, highlighting how the technicians in Japan have done an excellent job on the new STR13 unit. The Technical Director of the Faenza Scuderia revealed how reliability, compared to the past, it wasn't a problem at all as Brendon Hartley and Pierre Gasly completed both sessions with a single unit. A truly incredible result if we compare it to the numerous stops suffered by McLaren over the course of previous seasons.

Here are the words of James Key: "We closed another positive session with many kilometers covered. On Thursday we replicated what we did last week: in the morning some runs on the softer compounds and little fuel on board, while in the afternoon we concentrated on laps in race configuration. We learned more about the tires and certain aspects related to the car's set-up than what we had discovered, so it was useful, but there is still a lot of data to analyze before the race. I would like to thank our colleagues for their excellent work".

"We completed the test with just one power unit - he added - and in T2 everything basically went well, apart from a small problem at the end of the last day: we stopped the car as a precaution to analyze the matter in more detail. Considering we were close to completing our program today anyway, we felt it was the best thing to do: Honda is now investigating, but otherwise everything went smoothly with them. I would like to thank them for their hard work and excellent support over the last two weeks and what they have done on the design of the car.

“These were our 2018 winter tests: two weeks of rather intense work that flew by really quickly. Now we can't wait for the season to start! We have reached the end of a process that began more than a year ago and has spanned the design, development and construction of the STR13. Today we are at the beginning of the next phase which will be to race and further develop the car: We can't wait to get started in Melbourne!” he concluded.

Roberto Valenti