Honda's compact 2019 F1 engine design has not hurt its performance

Red Bull boss Christian Horner said this week that the installation of the Honda power unit was the best his outfit had ever experienced, labelling the engine "a thing of beauty".

Honda's previous attempts to produce an extreme compact design hurt its progress in its first year with McLaren in 2015, but the Japanese manufacturer has insisted its '19 approach will not hurt its performance.

"I think we are in neutral," said Honda's F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe about the trade off between performance and packaging.

"The power unit performance or total package performance, we discussed very much with both teams [Red Bull and sister team Toro Rosso], and we compromised [to work out] which is better.

"If you have more power, [you have] more performance one way, but the chassis side is [at a] deficit. So what is the best compromise? Then we decide the best [overall] package performance."

Tanabe said the push for a more compact design was instigated by Red Bull Technology.

"Red Bull Technology discussed this between the teams and that makes our job very simple," he said.

"The aim is to make it compact and nice. That is what we have done during this off season."

Tanabe was also confident Honda had made progress on the reliability front this year, having stuck with the same concept.

"We carried over the concept from last year, which means the concept from 2017," he said.

"One of the reasons is the power unit regulations does not change this year, so we have kept working on our power unit.

"We improved our performance and reliability for this year. It means it [the engine] is not new but updated."