Tanabe: "We saw unusual data at Albon's after he was in the gravel"

Last weekend Red Bull Racing had to abandon both RB16s due to technical problems. Max Verstappen's problems came from Honda, but Alexander Albon's problems now seem to be the result of the clash with Lewis Hamilton.

"On Max’s, we had a mechanical problem which led to an electronic problem on the PU,” said Honda F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe on Friday", says technical director of Honda Toyoharu Tanabe on Friday after free practice 1 according to The Race.

"And Alex’s car, we saw some unusual data after he ran over the gravel. It exceeded our limit so we stopped the car", says the Japanese.

"We had a very short period between the last race and today, we applied a very simple and primitive countermeasure. So, we changed all the related electric parts on the car, on the PU. We’re still investigating the data, but it looks for various reasons related to this problem. From this P1 running the car runs OK. We will keep watching and monitoring during the long runs and also the race", Tanabe continues.

"As soon as we got the logging data, we analysed the data at the truck. And then later we checked the car, especially for Alex’s car, we removed the parts from the PU and then some shipped to Sakura R&D in Japan, and some shipped to Milton Keynes", continues Tanabe.

According to Tanabe, all parts of the suspect power source were tested on the dyno there and they simulated similar conditions. That data is now being analysed.