Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley says Honda has “definitely delivered”🐠 on its pre-season hopes of producing a competitive and reliabl🐎e 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 manufacturꦆer 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 afterno🌃on, 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 ltxcn.top. “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 positꦅive.”

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 t☂o Toro Rosso. 

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

“When we went to the factor𓆏y 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 th🥂e year and not slide off like previous years. It’s a good start but there’s still some work to do.”