Gasly plays down effectiveness of Honda engine upgrade for French GP
F1 News
Red Bull will receive an engine upgrade from Honda this weekend, but Pierre Gasly isn't expecting to feel a "massive gain" during his home French Grand Prix.
Gasly, Max Verstappen and Daniil Kvyat will all be using Honda's Spec 3 for the first time this weekend, while Alex Albon will be forced to wait because Toro Rosso didn't want to double up on penalties. The Red Bull boys will not pick up grid drops.
In pre-season, Helmut Marko hyped-up the Honda engine, but so far in 2019, it hasn't managed to match either Mercedes or Ferrari. The first engine upgrade was implemented for reliability reasons and while this upgrade should improve performance, Gasly isn't getting too excited.
“This one will be a bit more focused on the performance, but we don’t expect a massive gain from it. I think the overall performance will be slightly increased but it’s not like it’s going to change massively - or catch the teams ahead of us massively," Gasly said at Paul Ricard.
“So let’s see what we can do during the weekend but it should give us a bit more in the race but it’s not going to be massively different in qualifying.”
Gasly found himself behind both Renault drivers when the chequered flag dropped in Canada and Verstappen could only clinch fifth. The Frenchman believes the team should do better in France because the track is better suited to the Red Bull package.
"I think it’s a track that probably suits our package a bit more than Canada. You still have many long straights, which unfortunately are still a bit tricky for us, even though we are making progress," Gasly said.
“But I think we have new little bits on the car coming and I think we should be more competitive here than we were in Canada.”