Hartley: Honda has delivered for “quietly confident” STR

Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley says Honda has “definitely delivered” on its pre-season hopes of producing a competitive and reliable Formula 1 engine for the 2018 season. 

The Faenza-based outfit has enjoyed a solid pre-season of testing at Barcelona, racking up some of the highest mileage managed across the six days of running so far at the Circuit de Catalunya without encountering any engine-related problems - in contrast to the issues which plagued the Japanese manufacturer during its disastrous three-year tenure with McLaren. 

Despite a minor sensor issue costing Toro Rosso around an hour of on-track time in the afternoon, Hartley racked up 119 laps and ended the second day of the second test fifth in the timesheets, 1.7s off the leading pace set by Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo. 

“They’ve brought a couple of updates again,” Hartley said when asked about Toro Rosso’s early progress with Honda by Crash.net. “They’ve been working hard and so far we’ve had zero reliability issues and it’s been really smooth sailing from the Honda point of view, so that’s been really positive.”

The two-time WEC champion, who is on the eve of his first full F1 campaign in 2018, said he refused to spend time worrying about Honda’s reliability concerns over the winter break following its switch from McLaren to Toro Rosso. 

“I was really positive and optimistic before I came here, for my sanity. There was no point expecting it to be bad before we even arrived. 

“When we went to the factory three or four weeks ago I could feel there was some quiet confidence within everyone. I had a couple of meetings at the factory at Faenza about the early signs from Honda, so I had high expectations before I arrived and it definitely delivered.

“The plan this year is to make big improvements through the year and not slide off like previous years. It’s a good start but there’s still some work to do.”