Brendon Hartley will take another new power unit for today’s Austrian Grand Prix as Honda is taking advantage of the opportunity to fit new hardware to his car without taking a significant penalty.
Hartley has already exceeded his maximum allocation of power unit parts, so any further new unit he takes will incur a penalty. As he has qualified 19th for today’s race, and fitting a new unit will mean being sent to the back of the grid, the change will only cost him one position.“We are changing all the [power unit] components on Brendon’s car prior to the race,” Honda announced on social media. “This is for tactical reasons, given that he qualified on the back row.”
“There were no technical issues with the [power unit] on Saturday,” they added.
Hartley failed to progress beyond Q1 after he had to revert to the team’s old-specification front wing yesterday. “I damaged one this morning, there wasn’t enough spares,” he explained. “That was due to me damaging it in free practice three, which is unfortunate.”
“I think the last run should have been quicker but I didn’t get it all together. Q2 was obviously possible. But it was as simple as that, one tenth missed out, Pierre was three-tenths faster.
“Yes, I had the old-spec front wing, but that wouldn’t explain all the three tenths. Credit where credit’s due, he was faster than me.”
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2018 F1 season
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Ads
1st July 2018, 10:50
Does anyone actually know how many engines torro rosso and Honda have actually gone through this year?
Sviat
1st July 2018, 11:04
5th ICE, MGU-H, turbo.
4th MGU-K, energy store, ECU.
Sviat
1st July 2018, 11:04
It’s for Hartley.
cheesewiz
1st July 2018, 11:26
Odds are he’ll be doing this quite often for the rest of the year.
Jere (@jerejj)
1st July 2018, 11:58
“We are changing all the [power unit] components on Brendon’s car prior to the race,”
– Not all of them, though. The following four elements: ICE, TC, MGU-H, and MGU-K.
Johns
1st July 2018, 14:03
Good call on Hondas part. This allows engine development with very little penalty. Quite a bit of an advantage over the McClaren situation.
BasCB (@bascb)
1st July 2018, 16:05
They did it numerous times while with McLaren too Johns. Although, given where Hartley ended the race, it might have not helped them a bit.