Honda responds to suspicion: 'Second engine the same as first in terms of performance'.

During the press conference, technical director Toyoharu Tanabe joked about the suspicion, according to the site of The Race: "I am very happy if it is true. It is not true. According to the current regulations, a power update is not allowed during the season. As a result, our second power unit is the same as the first in terms of specification and performance."

Honda improves reliability

The second change has positive effects on reliability, which is within the rules.

Tanabe continued: "The current performance improvement is the result of the hard work of Honda and the teams. We are only allowed to change for reasons of reliability, cost considerations and logistics. We must first submit very detailed changes to the FIA, and the FIA has approved those changes."

"The FIA distributes all the documents to the other PU manufacturers. So we need the approval of the other major manufacturers to change the specifications of a part. We are very careful about changing the performance. It is not possible to improve the performance during the season. That's my answer to that suspicion."

"We improved our weaknesses, and then we moved our strengths forward. And as a result, the basic performance specification is the same, but the on-track performance I think we have improved," Tanabe said.