Honda claims they are aiming to bring their ‘spec 3’ power unit to the next race in Austria after trying it out in Baku.
Fernando Alonso tested the upgraded engine on the Friday of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, before a gearbox failure halted his progress.
The Japanese manufacturer believes the upgraded engine is worth two to three-tenths of a second per lap, this was also evident when Alonso was one of the quickest in the speed traps before the car failed on him.
“We had a gearbox failure and we had some over-revs,” Hasegawa told Motorsport.com. “We didn’t see any issues, but we will check the engine in Sakura again.
“It should be alright so we expect to introduce spec 3 for both engines. Even if we don’t have a spare, there is no option – we need to run two ‘spec 3’ engines [in Austria].”
Hasegawa also mentioned how ‘relieved’ he was at McLaren securing their first points of the season in Azerbaijan, perhaps hoping the pressure from McLaren may ease the strained tensions between the two partners in 2017.
The Honda boss is still all too aware of the gap that remains to the teams in front of them, even admitting they were lucky with the points after just over half the field saw the chequered flag.
“I’m very relieved that we could get points. The drivers made a very good job in a race of survival and as a result, we are very pleased about that. It’s very important [to get two cars to the finish].
“We didn’t have a big concern [regarding reliability], even if we’re were introducing a new engine and MGU-H. I’m very pleased we can show some development on reliability and because of that, we can get points, which is very good.
“It’s very positive, but just with one race, I couldn’t say we are very confident from a performance point of view, just 13 cars finished, so it’s fair to say we’re not very fast.
“The gain [from the update] is not big enough to catch up the top runners but it is good progress.”
