Honda promise to look at track conditions "carefully" to plan for the race

Honda will be relatively pleased with Saturday's qualifying session in Portgual. As is the norm these days, they had three cars in the final stage of qualifying and were pushing for pole position with Red Bull Racing. 

After Max Verstappen's lap time was deleted, pole position wasn't to be for the Honda team. However, Verstappen will be starting from third place for the second consecutive time and the Dutchman knows what happened at the start last time in Imola. 

Tanabe's reaction

"Red Bull Racing Honda took both second-row places on the grid with Max third and Perez fourth. For AlphaTauri Honda, Gasly also got into Q3 to line up ninth on the grid, his sixth consecutive top ten qualifying stretching back to last year which proves how consistent he is," Tanabe said.

Yuki Tsunoda failed to escape from Q2. But Tanabe hopes to see his fellow countryman use his "aggressive performance" on the circuit during Sunday's Portuguese Grand Prix to work his way through the field. 

"His teammate Yuki was racing here for the very first time and he missed the cut to Q3 and qualified 14th. But we are sure he will deliver his usual aggressive performance in the race. Track conditions were very different today to Friday so we will look at this factor carefully in our plans for the race," he added.