How Red Bull-Honda's victory plans are shaping up

Two heavy crashes in pre-season testing, one during each week, would normally leave a big dent in a Formula 1 team's morale, as well as the heavy damage inflicted on its car. Red Bull's mechanics would not have been thrilled to have to rebuild the RB15 after Pierre Gasly's high-speed accident on the penultimate day of testing. Losing valuable mileage, just as everyone is fettling their low-fuel set-ups and establishing their prospects over race distances, was also regrettable.

Yet this is not a time for negativity at Red Bull. Its Honda feel-good factor was evident through the second half of 2018, and the winter, and has not diminished after the partnership hit the track for the first time.

There has been no cold, harsh reality exposed by two weeks of testing. In fact, two very productive tests at Barcelona have left all parties satisfied and quietly encouraged.

You may not have got that impression from recent comments in public, as the Red Bull-Honda mantra so far has shifted from intense positivity to keeping expectations in check during testing. But there is an unspoken confidence and optimism, and a dramatic shift in attitude from what Red Bull displayed as its crumbling Renault partnership decayed completely last year.

As Max Verstappen sits down with Autosport ahead of his final day in the car before heading to Australia, the optimism is palpable. He says he was so excited at experiencing the Honda for the first time at Red Bull's shakedown that he "almost didn't sleep" the night before.

Verstappen has been impressed by Honda's focus, working manner and reliability. By the time of our conversation, Red Bull had completed around 80 laps fewer than Ferrari and 250 fewer than Mercedes, and while Verstappen acknowledges there could have been even more mileage, he points out that "compared to what we've had over the last few years it's been pretty positive for us in terms for reliability".

"It's a completely different engine in how it runs, and how you pick up throttle, the way you downshift and upshift. It's a different world" Max Verstappen

But apart from indicating that Red Bull is better prepared than it was in its previous life with Renault, what does all this mean in real terms? Red Bull and Honda could work together just fine with a perfectly reliable package, but racking up hundreds of laps does either party little good if the performance isn't there.

Honda has remained methodical through testing, and Red Bull has been happy to go along with that. Early basic function checks gave way to calibration work, to tailor the engines to the style of each driver and establish a base energy management usage. Then came longer runs, and race simulations.

In the meantime, Honda's bolstered trackside staff had to gel with its new team, Red Bull, and the personnel that were added to Toro Rosso to cope with supplying two teams needed to settle in there as well.

We have hints of Red Bull-Honda's real pace, but little more. The penultimate day of testing was the fastest so far, and it looks like Red Bull is still holding something back. Analysis suggests it's around four tenths of a second behind Ferrari on one-lap pace, but that is only one tenth faster than Toro Rosso. Regardless of the 2018 Red Bull parts that help comprise the junior team's '19 car, it's fair to expect Red Bull to be a little further ahead than that.

After crashing, Gasly admitted that Red Bull could not match Ferrari's test-topping time. But it doesn't need to over one lap - not yet. Red Bull was always adrift of Ferrari and Mercedes in qualifying spec with Renault, so aiming to be within 0.3s is a reasonable starting point. And it seems a realistic aim at this stage, based on the current leaderboard.

At testing, though, insight into a team's situation exists beyond the lap times. Given the quality of its resources, Honda is expected to produce a top F1 engine. As Verstappen describes his first sight of the Sakura research and development facility in late-2017, "I was surprised that they were not doing better at the time, because it is super professional and super high tech."

Honda will not say explicitly what's different for 2019. It describes its new design as not "100%" revised, but every part has been reviewed and modifications have been made to reduce weight and improve reliability. Honda has targeted greater combustion engine efficiency too.

One of the more detailed differences from last year is the engine's installation. This caught Honda out with McLaren, particularly when the team pursued its infamous 'size zero' packaging. Given that Red Bull has supreme design prowess, it was fair to fear Honda could trip up over the same problem.

In the first week of testing Red Bull team boss Christian Horner described the packaging of the Honda engine as "a thing of beauty", and the best installation the team has had so far. Another dig at Renault? Not quite. Toro Rosso has noticed it too.

Honda is satisfied with its work, and was confident it had not sacrificed reliability in the pursuit of performance. The packaging has caused some problems during testing, but not enough to set alarm bells ringing.

"We don't have a serious problem with the current installation but we found some issues because of the tight packaging," admits Honda F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe. "The shape was a little bit too aggressive, so we need to make it a little bit different. It's not a big concern.

"Some [solutions] are very easy, we can fix here. Some we need to apply a temporary countermeasure [at the track] and then in the future we need a permanent countermeasure. So far, it's not serious. We can be ready for the first race, with the items we have issues with here."

The higher expectations that come with supplying Red Bull, a team that won four races last year powered by Renault, mean Honda cannot afford to be conservative. But it did not go back to basics last year either.

The concept it introduced in 2017 ultimately killed the McLaren-Honda union, but that was because it had such a problematic birth and early life. Understanding and optimising that concept allowed Honda to push on in 2018, and it has continued with the basic philosophy for this year.

Toro Rosso technical director Jody Egginton says the lessons learned from his team's partnership with Honda have allowed it to push the envelope a bit more, a benefit that Red Bull will feel as well - the whole point of pairing Honda with its junior team in the first place.

"It is a well-packaged engine," says Egginton. "It gives you plenty of scope to package it tidily. I think it's fair to say it is better than last year's. We've had more time to focus on that in the second year and you get dividends from that.

"You can spend more time refining it and going through the iterations and optimising everything, and you just get a better integration of chassis and engine."

This is vital for a team such as Red Bull to fully exploit having a proper engine partner, rather than being a customer as it was with Renault. There is no threat of having to react to an engine design or layout that clashes with optimum chassis integration. And through Toro Rosso, Red Bull has learned Honda's heat rejection requirements and gained an insight into how to size its cooling package, which reduces the risk of a 'bloated' car design. All that provides more freedom on the aerodynamic side, which is where Red Bull can excel.

"We've been able to ask questions with Red Bull and Honda," says Egginton. "[For example] the air intake, or some aspects of plenum design, if you've got a bit of scope to customise that you can optimise it to your chassis.

"If it's an engine you're given, you can't make those changes and you have to maybe make an adjustment on your rollhoop or back of chassis."

"There is no limitation, basically. They do everything to try to win, hopefully for the season already" Max Verstappen

Red Bull needs those advantages to have a tangible impact and the early on-track feedback has been encouraging. Verstappen was not shy to make his feelings known about Renault last season when he felt he had an inferior product. So, while a cynic may interpret any positivity about Honda to be a lingering swipe at his former engine supplier, a more reasonable way of taking it is that Verstappen calls a spade a spade.

We can, with an appropriate pinch of salt, trust his opinion. And his early verdict on the Honda is that he felt the benefit of his new engine "straight away". Verstappen was particularly scathing of the Renault engine's driveability in 2018, but describes the Honda's characteristics here as "very good".

"It's a completely different engine how it runs, and how you pick up throttle, the way you downshift and upshift," he says. "It's a different world.

"There's not really a big question mark or anything. I guess that's very positive."

Tanabe jokes to Autosport that he is "never happy" with the performance of the engine, and he has been made to feel "nervous" at times during testing.

"Of course we have a target [for the start of the season], and a target through the year as well," he says. "We are not so confident with the current achievement. Still there are a lot of areas we need to work on to catch up to the top competitors."

While Honda remains honest in terms of its need to improve to catch Ferrari and Mercedes, it's clear that it is definitely being extra-reserved when it comes to commenting on its current position. But this is not a surprise given that setting explicit targets and failing to meet them was the mechanism through which McLaren wriggled free in 2017.

It cannot detract from the clear evidence that Honda has re-energised Red Bull and Verstappen after years in a frustrating limbo between genuine title contenders and F1's 'Class B'. Sniping at the odd win cannot pass muster for a team that won four straight title doubles from 2010-13.

"It's a very fresh start and everybody is just looking forward to starting to work together and achieve great results," says Verstappen. "There's a very positive vibe in the team, and maybe it's good just to have fresh motivation to do well. [Honda] run a lot more on the dyno, much more than we used to. That is a positive step forwards."

Victories have always been the target in 2019 but the ferocity of the Mercedes/Ferrari fight moved F1's benchmark higher than ever last season. Red Bull and Honda could have become a casualty of that this year, but also risked creating more problems by overreached in a bid to make up the gap that evidently still exists between Honda and the top of the engine pecking order.

Neither party will get carried away trying to answer whether they will win this year, and we are still a few weeks from having the evidence we need to judge for ourselves.

The gap to Mercedes and Ferrari cannot be eliminated overnight, or over the winter in this case. But it can be chipped away at, and Red Bull would accept nothing less from Honda.

Testing indicates Honda has risen to that challenge, not been overwhelmed by it.