Speaking in Barcelona, where his company is providing the power units for both Red Bull owned teams this year, Honda's technical boss, Toyoharu Tanabe, has dismissed the suggestion that supplying the Austrian team in addition to its Italian sister outfit means additional pressure for the Japanese manufacturer.

"It has not changed," he told reporters, when asked about the pressure. "Over the course of the period, the manufacturer has supplied to Toro Rosso and to both teams it has been the same, the desire and the target.

"Of course, we respect the Red Bull results over the past few years," he continued, "and of course there is pressure, but we want to supply high performance, which is always our target, so there is not much change.

"Once we participate in a race as Honda, not only in Formula One but all racing, winning is our aim, our target," he insisted, "but at this stage, it is very hard to tell what will happen this year. Our target for both teams will be to improve and we want to get better results than last year for both teams."

Asked about progress over the winter, he said: "We worked on the 2019 PU not only on the performance but also reliability. We believe we improved both. The development area is not only a single part, so we reviewed every part and improved performance and reliability."

While Tanabe and Honda might not be feeling any additional pressure at this precise moment, one cannot help but feel that this will change somewhat should Max not be challenging for wins in the very near future.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by F1 Yank, 20/02/2019 23:01

"Yeah, I agree with GarH but I think the pressure has been on since they announced the Redbull Team A association. There is no way that you can move forward without consistency, reliability and performance. I was hoping Honda would have closed the gap considerably to Renault, Mercedes and Ferrari much sooner than they have. Hopefully this "marriage" as GarH described will continue to bloom. It surely didn't with McLaren. However I think the Honda engine performed much better than McLaren's chassis did and the swap to Renault PU backed that theory up. If Redbull wins a race or two (possibly more?) there will be many other teams that will want the Honda PU in their car's setup as well."

Honda technical boss insists Red Bull does not add pressure

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