Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost believes his team is in the best situation it has ever been since switching to Honda power at the start of last season.
Despite two points free weekends from three grands prix, Toro Rosso has already beaten expectations with a relatively clean season. The team has only suffered one engine failure so far this year and enjoyed a strong performance at Bahrain, where rookie Pierre Gasly scored Honda’s best finish since the manufacturer returned to the championship.
Tost believes teaming up with Honda has put Toro Rosso in a strong position, as the design team has been better able to integrate the engine into their cars. He also expects that strength to grow in 2019.
“Toro Rosso is in the best situation we have ever been – because we are now much more involved in the complete design process, regarding the car and how to fit in the power unit, how to design the cooling system, the exhaust, where to put the electric boxes and so on,” he said.
“I think, especially for next year, this will be a big advantage from the complete car design point of view.”
With just one points finish so far this season, Toro Rosso is sixth in the constructors’ championship, 13 points behind Renault and 16 points behind Honda’s old partner McLaren. But Tost believes his team and Honda are working well together to develop the car and the engine throughout the season.
“I must say that they found a really good way of working together without any problems and I am also convinced that this will continue in this way,” Tost said of his engineers and Honda’s employees.
“From the technical side, as I mentioned before, we had a couple of technical meetings in December where we discussed different topics and where both sides started immediately to work on this and we are still quite close, cooperating together because we want to develop the car as well as the power unit also during the season.”
