Toro Rosso took "lessons" for Honda communication

Communication was a key issue during Honda’s tumultuous three-year reunion with McLaren, and Toro Rosso has been keen to avoid a repeat.

Speaking after the launch of the new Toro Rosso, team principal Franz Tost revealed the team had seminars at its factory at HQ to help staff understand the culture.

“We have a real fantastic working relationship with Honda,” said Tost. “There were no problems, from the communication side.

“We at Toro Rosso started to prepare ourselves for this corporation. We had some lessons in Faenza how to communicate with Japanese companies in the form of Honda.

“This was useful to get an idea of the way of thinking because it’s a completely different culture. These seminars had a really positive result.

"It was a complete new start from Toro Rosso. We are a kind of works team.

"For Toro Rosso it is a big advantage to work with such a big company as Honda.”

Toro Rosso shook the car down at Misano last week, with the test running smoothly and the team completing the running ahead of schedule.

And technical director Key said the fire-up had gone well and had too been completed a day early.

Tost has been impressed with Honda so far and feels positive about the engine’s reliability and performance despite its recent difficulties.

“We won’t have any troubles, because the power unit is working quite well,” said Tost.

“I am convinced Honda has the capacity and the know-how to develop the engine on a level that later we will be there where we all expect to be.

“I see it very, very positively because Honda made a lot of progress in the last months from the reliability side, from the performance side and we are all looking forward to this season.”