Scuderia Toro Rosso STR13

Engine development

In a departure from the last three seasons with McLaren, at pre-season testing in Barcelona, Honda showed significant progress with its power unit completing the second highest lap tally of 93 in the first day without any issue with Brendon Hartley at the helm. The second day of testing went just as well, with STR completing 82 laps, the third highest tally again with no issue, this time with Pierre Gasly in the driver's seat. At the close of the first test, Toro Rosso topped the total mileage charts finishing off with Pierre Gasly completing 147 laps on the final day, this showed that Honda with Toro Rosso, had completed more laps in week one than Honda had completed with McLaren in the entire test fortnight in 2017. Following the close of testing, driver Brendon Hartley claimed the Honda PU was easier to drive and felt more powerful than the units supplied by Renault at the end of last season.

Following a PU failure in Pierre Gasly's car during the Australian GP following a relatively big hit from a curb, Honda revealed he had suffered from an MGU-H failure, an issue which was well known to be Honda's achilles heel for the last few years. Reacting immediately, Honda's R&D facility in Sakura, Japan claimed they had identified the cause of the failure after thorough inspection and had developed a design fix that they were confident would prevent this issue from recurring and would be ready in time for both driver's for the following round, the Bahrain GP. After making significant progress with the PU mapping during the practice sessions at Bahrain, Pierre Gasly managed a 6th place during qualifying which he was able to turn into a 4th place result during the race. This was the highest finishing position for Honda since returning to F1 in 2015.

At the Canadian GP, Honda debuted its Spec 2 PU which they revealed was focused on developments to the ICE with the aim of improving power without compromising reliability, it is believed the area of improvement was around the combustion concept and chamber design. The update was praised by driver Pierre Gasly who noted it was immediately more driveable and punchier than the previous iteration. Comparisons in lap times during practice between the previous unit and the updated unit were showing a near 0.5-second improvement at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Honda claimed the unit should only improve with further analysis and adjustments made to the mapping as the season progresses, however after an initially strong debut for the upgrade, reliability issues appeared on Pierre Gasly's PU which Honda remarked seemed to be isolated issues not related to the upgrade and would investigate further.

After several lacklustre performances at a variety of track layouts, Toro Rosso said they were trying to figure out their entire package with correlation issues on the aero updates and even Honda's upgraded unit and what its actual potential could be as it seemed to run reliably but was sensitive to conditions and track layout. Red Bull's race director Christian Horner, who announced that Red Bull Racing had signed a 2 year engine supply deal with Honda starting from 2019 to replace Renault, citing Honda's enormous improvement in Canada showing great potential in their development pace, claimed the Honda and Renault PU were within 1% of each other in race trim.

Honda's F1 Technical Director, Toyoharu Tanabe, made mention that Honda's PU upgrade plan for 2018 was on track and going well and that with the introduction of Spec 2 in Canada and its subsequent improvements in the following races they were focused sharply on the Spec 3 upgrade which is to be centred around improvements to the ERS system, making specific mention of a redesigned MGU-K and battery with a tentative debut around the United States Grand Prix.

After showing promising pace amongst the midfield with strong finishes at both the Belgian and Hungarian Grand Prix, while also demonstrating relative strength at power sensitive circuits such as Spa and Monza where the team believed they may struggle, following the Italian GP at Monza, German publication Auto Motor und Sport released a report claiming they had calculated an estimate for the power figures of each manufacturer using the latest GPS data gathered from Monza. The data revealed Honda's Spec 2 PU, which debuted in Canada, to produce 715hp without electrical assistance, which put it ahead of Renault's Spec B used by the Renault works team and McLaren, however behind by a margin of 15hp to Renault's newly introduced Spec C PU (Italian GP) which is only utilised by Red Bull Racing. However AMuS also reported that Honda had made great strides with the development of their Spec 3 PU with initial tests suggesting a power output of around 750hp and that it may be ready for introduction as early as the Russian GP in Sochi, two race weekends earlier than planned.