Honda has doubts about abolishing qualification mode:'How are you going to check?'

F1 News

18 August 2020 at 08:10
  • GPblog.com

Max Verstappen still had to change his Honda engine for the Spanish Grand Prix, but despite an old engine he still managed to drive to P2. Honda can be satisfied, although the gap to Mercedes is still very big.

Honda happy with Verstappen

''Luckily, we moved up one place and were in second place. The top three have a completely different pace than the rest of the field, so it's good to see that one of us is there'', says Toyoharu Tanabe to Auto Sport Web about Max Verstappen. Victory wasn't in it though.

''Overtaking a Mercedes is very difficult. It is difficult at all to get close to another car with a Formula 1 car, so you really have to be much faster per lap. So it's more about the speed in qualifying'', says Tanabe. From Belgium the FIA wants the teams to use only one engine mode, but Tanabe wonders if this is feasible and who will be hurt the most in the end.

Honda doubts about abolishing qualifying mode

''We're having talks with the FIA, because we as manufacturers don't feel that you can control this. If we can all share our ideas about this and come to a solution this can already be done in Belgium, but otherwise you have to postpone those rules first'', says Tanabe about that. He doesn't know yet if Honda will benefit from it.

''That will all depend on the way this is controlled. If Mercedes loses speed then that's good for us of course, but at the moment I'm not sure yet'', concludes the technical man at Honda.