Tanabe: "There is still room for improvement on both the PU and chassis side"

Honda's top man Toyoharu Tanabe looks back on a successful first day in Bahrain on the Outer Circuit. The Japanese company let it be known that the team discovered no problems with the engines.

Positive Friday for Honda

"The first day of free practice for the Sakhir GP went smoothly without any issues on the PU side. Because this is a new layout, we based our initial settings on simulation work carried out in the factory," says Tanabe on the Honda F1 website.

Tanabe says it's encouraging to see that the four Honda cars were in the top ten in both sessions on Friday and all four were in the top six in the first session. "However, there is still room for improvement on both the PU and chassis side and we will be working now with both teams, studying the data to prepare for Saturday."

Hectic sessions

It was very busy on the track, because the lap on the Outer Circuit is very short. "As expected, with this very short lap, traffic was a problem, even in practice. It means that for qualifying, our teams will also have to do a perfect job of sending the cars out on track at the right time," concludes Tanabe.