2018 Scuderia Toro Rosso F1 Team - Honda

[Bisonas]

If your chassis is there or thereabout, you need your engine to be there also or thereabout. You need both unfortunately

.

do you know that there is something called driver performance. i cant name any other driver other than lewis hamilton who shined in their rookie year. palmer, sritokin, new drivers come and takes time to adjust to high G and new tracks and race craft. so it a new ball game and it take at least 1 year for them to get there, and even so some like palmer will still struggle to keep pace with the pro experience drivers like hulk. TR drivers more time. if TR had sainz or even kyatt. they would have qualified and had better race pace compared to gasly and hartley.

For the arguments shake, i took for granted that top teams with the biggest budgets can afford skilled drivers which each one of them would be able to take the championship when driving a superior car. What makes a car superior is if we put it down in 2 words its , Aero and Engine. All i said its that you need both to be there(at the top) or thereabout (from the top) to win the championship.

[dren]

Both drivers had a few races last year, have driven in F1 as development drivers, and have had successful careers in other series. They may not be top talents, but I don't see the car magically jumping into the midfield with a driver change. The chassis and the PU are the biggest performance differentiators. Once Honda brings their big update and the chassis gets some slimming, maybe we will then see the car be a bit more competitive.

[techman]

"Shined" is relative, of all the people you named, only Lewis was in a car capable of winning races, of course he did very well. But there are other rookies who have "shined" relative to their equipment. Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, Esteban Ocon. Jacques Villeneuve also did well in his rookie season, he also had a good car.

true but they get better on their second year as f1 drivers. i believe lewis is better now than when he first raced. more experience will always help. tr drivers will get better but will take time. till then honda is to blame for that also
most of the time new driver lack race craft, qualy are not good enough and plenty of crashes but it a development process for the driver who will get better .thats why when ever a new driver come in along with a pro. the new driver will struggle and will most likey score less than the experience driver. its natural. tr should have retained kyatt. harlty is not f1 material

[loner]

What i said, have nothing to do with Mclaren, TR or RB.
Engineers within Teams know very well how much advantage or deficit each engine has on another regarding power and efficiency. They have the tools and the data to estimate those numbers quite accurate. Not 100% accurate, but close enough in order to protest to FIA in a more official way. And trust me that their tools are not like your logic.

"Mclaren in Australia qualiy was 2.5 off Hamilton and after the SC Mercedes , Ferrari , RBR pulled about 8 seconds gap in the first 5 laps but we can't say renault has a turd of PU because we can see its very decent PU in the hands of RBR"

Which is a very simplistic logic, with conclusions based on what each of us want to believe.
Is Renault a decent PU compared to Mercedes and Ferrari ?? or RBR chassis its just that good atm ??
Is Mclaren so slow compared to RBR, or Alonso was managing Verstapen and his tires knowing he couldn't possibly do anything better even if he was making slightly better lap times after the restart. Its all about Perspective.

Now, That 0.3s parity on a theoretical Barcelona lap its a true number that was agreed. The methodology about it though its a problem.
What Horner is crying about its something that he is crying about for a year now.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/12923 ... ine-parity

The problem is that If you are Mercedes, and you know you have 1s advantage for example (theoretical margin), what stops you from making it look like 0.3 advantage. Control the pace, preserve the engine, adjust the engine modes, make it look like its more close and not show the full advantage until you actually need to and if you ever need to.
So keep all the parity engine crying at bay, and take both championships with ease.
That's what Horner suggesting that Mercedes is doing atm. We don't know at what extend this may be true, but we can acknowledge that it is a possibility. And his tools, are better than ours. Politics are involved also of course.

well thats the point in a nutshell.. the 2014 formula regulations pushed the climate agenda (petroleum is the new coal)
and handed a massive advantage to Mercedes with all the silly restrictions despite how advanced this Power Units are.
now about teams tools to measure which are not like my logic.. RBR and Mercedes saying Honda
made massive step forward and we all saw good reliability and good speed trap in testing
its better for me to hope that Honda will make another big step power wise in midseason and team up with the best chassis to try to go head to head with Mercedes for the sake of my own excitement
because as you said it seems Mercedes just take both championships with ease.

[Ground Effect]

"Shined" is relative, of all the people you named, only Lewis was in a car capable of winning races, of course he did very well. But there are other rookies who have "shined" relative to their equipment. Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, Esteban Ocon. Jacques Villeneuve also did well in his rookie season, he also had a good car.

true but they get better on their second year as f1 drivers. i believe lewis is better now than when he first raced. more experience will always help. tr drivers will get better but will take time. till then honda is to blame for that also
most of the time new driver lack race craft, qualy are not good enough and plenty of crashes but it a development process for the driver who will get better .thats why when ever a new driver come in along with a pro. the new driver will struggle and will most likey score less than the experience driver. its natural. tr should have retained kyatt. harlty is not f1 material

Of course it would appear retaining Kvyatt would have made more sense to me and to you. But obviously people who know more decided against that, so there must be a reason. I don't think it's fair to say Hartley is not F1 materials. There are a lot of variables to consider why his performance at Melbourne was poor. I'm pretty sure his WEC experience and expertise with fuel and tyre management will be a bonus along the line in tight battles.

[Raleigh]

Red Bull was not going to put Kyvat back in their car so there was no point retaining him at STR regardless of him being better or worse than potential replacements. Indeed the only reason he wasn’t canned sooner is probably a lack of a clear candidate to take the seat.

At the end of the day STR is a training ground and evaluation for drivers and engineers, results themselves are not the primary or even secondary goal.

[HPD]

At the end of the day STR is a training ground and evaluation for drivers and engineers, results themselves are not the primary or even secondary goal.

So, how can we evaluate Honda performance?
We return to the starting point. Only Red Bull can know the performance of Honda.

[Marti_EF3]

For the Barcelona testing... We know for sure that the PU doing 330+ speed traps on 1st week was the "performance" upgrade?? Or just aero setup testing??

Because it was a difference about 10kmh or more compared to the 2nd week...

[techman]

Of course it would appear retaining Kvyatt would have made more sense to me and to you. But obviously people who know more decided against that, so there must be a reason. I don't think it's fair to say Hartley is not F1 materials. There are a lot of variables to consider why his performance at Melbourne was poor. I'm pretty sure his WEC experience and expertise with fuel and tyre management will be a bonus along the line in tight battles.

can you show me a line up where a rookie came in alongside with an experience driver and the rookie driver got more points in the end? an example. maybe there is a few but most times the experience driver wins with more points. it was lewis who actually leveled with alonso one season . more experience the better. look what happened to gp2 champ palmer. too slow. hulk was out driving him every race. williams driver line up is probably the worse or equal to toro rosso and sauber. sirotkin is new and slow. and stroll got outraced by massa on most occasion but got a lucky podium in baku. this year at least stroll will have more experience and will might outscore sirotkin.

[dren]

I actually had higher expectations for Sirotkin. We'll see how the season progresses. I'd put money on the TR drivers improving and besting the Williams drivers.

[Wouter]

First change of the season in engines. New engine ICE (2), turbo (2) and MGUH (2) for Gasly after the break Australia. New MGH (2) and turbo (2) for Hartey as a precaution. The MGUH and Turbo have an evolution with respect to Australia.

https://twitter.com/AlbertFabrega/statu ... 6527920128

[dren]

Thanks Wouter! Is it an evolution in terms of performance, or a reliability update?

[Wouter]

Thanks Wouter! Is it an evolution in terms of performance, or a reliability update?

I don't know. I have no Twitter account. Maybe you have and ask Albert Fabrega , he answers all the questions.

Edit: He says it is for reliability.

[etusch]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/hond ... 21470/?s=1

[Chicane]

De Ja vu from last season. Multiple units replaced on both cars when there are only three of the main and two of MGU-K and ES for the season. It does not reek of confidence now in to the 4th year. Toro Rosso is a tidy little midfield team which is a decent performer in the midfield and i feel sad they have to go through the saga all over again with grid penalties looking likely in the first half of the season.