For the first half of the 2018 Formula One season, both Scuderia Toro Rosso drivers, Brendon Hartley and Pierre Gasly, appeared to be there to help the team evaluate and develop the Honda engine for their senior team, Red Bull F1 Racing. Red Bull F1 currently are powered by Renault and they were to make a decision on which engine supplier they would have from the 2019 season on.
Now that the decision has been made to run with Honda, the focus for Toro Rosso appears to be on helping Gasly who will move up to Red Bull F1 in 2019 to replace Daniel Ricciardo who is leaving to join the Renault team.
Richard Gee captures this change in objectives in his article When all’s not fair in love and war… or Formula 1 posted on the velocitynews.co.nz website this week.
The example he gives is from the Belgium Grand Prix run last weekend at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit where Gasly finished ninth and Hartley down in 14th.
Gee decribes how this eventuated….
“I suggest Toro Rosso had already identified what Brendon was for and it wasn’t to try and give the team two shots at points. Knowing the runners ahead of Brendon would come in for stops at some point, and also knowing Brendon easily had enough pace to stay in touch with that group in the meantime, they left him out. Up the rankings he went as those ahead of him pitted, 13th, 12th, 11th then 10th. And that’s where I believe Toro Rosso wanted him. No matter that he was losing time hand over fist to the guys on fresher tyres behind, he had the track position they needed when they brought Gasly in.
“Gasly you see, had been embroiled in a very close scrap with Marcus Ericsson in his Sauber Ferrari throughout and with Bottas steaming through the field and passing him with ease, it was touch and go as to whether he might get ninth, tenth or even nothing given the speed of Sainz after his stop. Were they fearful of that Ferrari engine monstering their Honda motor up the long uphill Kemmel Straight after Eau Rouge where engine power was king? Possibly. Could a Safety Car intervention have left Gasly a sitting duck to the Sauber and a few others behind with more grunt? Probably. And thus Brendon became, as it is known in the trade, a ‘rear gunner’.
“Pierre duly took his stop and came out just behind Brendon, who then let his team mate by promptly. In came Ericsson and as he gathered speed up the hill after his stop, Brendon sailed by to become the meat in the sandwich between his team mate and the Sauber. The pair then enjoyed an entertaining scrap trading DRS-powered passes for a lap or two.
“Exciting to watch it may have been, but it was destroying both drivers races at that point. Ericsson was losing time in his battle with Gasly (around 7.8 seconds by the time he cleared Brendon) and the longer Brendon stayed out, the worse his finishing position was going to be. When the Kiwi finally did come in after Ericsson had made good his escape, he had lost a massive amount of time relative to those cars around him that had been on the same pace before the pit stops. Sainz in particular had looked vulnerable to Brendon earlier and yet ended the race a huge amount ahead in 11th.”
Let’s sit back and watch what unfolds this weekend at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
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