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Hartley: Toro Rosso "blew expectations out of the water" after Bahrain

11:40, 03 Jun 2018

byNicolás Quarles van Ufford

Toro Rosso's Brendon Hartley has admitted that his team exceeded all expectations in Bahrain earlier this season, and that their expectations of 2018 have been too high ever since.

In Bahrain, of course, Pierre Gasly incredibly managed to finish fourth, something that no one saw coming, not even the team themselves.

"It's very fair to say that we over exceeded all of our expectations in Bahrain," Hartley told Autosport.

It was the highest finish for Honda since their return to F1 in 2015.

In the other five races, the team only scored points twice. Hartley scored his first ever point in F1 in Baku, finishing tenth, and Gasly finished in seventh place in Monaco last week.

"We spent all of this time and energy incorporating Honda and there has been a lot of changes behind the scenes in aerodynamics, we've probably taken one step back to take two step forwards later in the season," Hartley continued.

"[Then we go] to Bahrain and blew all of our expectations out of the water, and probably for everyone else as well they would have expected that again.

"Since then we haven't had the pace in the race.

"There is light at the end of the tunnel, an update on the floor [introduced in Monaco] and an engine upgrade coming for Montreal.

"Everyone's motivated, working hard, but I think in some ways that result in Bahrain added all this expectation that maybe shouldn't have been there.

"But that's Formula One and you see other teams struggling from one week to the other as well."