Honda is expecting to find a “big advantage” from Red Bull and Toro Rosso sharing a greater number of parts in 2019.
While the junior outfit has always taken some components from the Milton Keynes factory, including the gearbox mechanics, the rest of the car has been completely independent.
However, this year, the complete gearbox plus rear suspension will be shared along with some elements of the front suspension, an area Red Bull is thought to be ahead of their rivals.
It also means Honda can concentrate on one design despite now supplying two teams for the first time since their works team and Super Aguri in 2008.
“I think it’s a big advantage,” technical director Toyoharu Tanabe told Autosport. “We don’t need to communicate between one team and another team, or they ask us completely separately.
“We don’t have that situation. Of course, they have a slightly different design and we need to adapt to each team but it’s not a big specification change.”
As for other benefits of now having four cars using their engines as opposed to two, Tanabe continued: “Theoretically we have double the data, not only trackside but on the development side.
“We have a different team [in Red Bull], a different car philosophy, a different way of working, especially trackside. We can get more information, more knowledge from a new team and that’s a big benefit for us.”
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It has come with some other challenges, however…
“We are increasing people at the factory of course,” Honda’s motorsport boss Masashi Yamamoto added. “Trackside, we have to have twice as many people as this year.
“We have to have another assembly team for the race engines.
“Maybe for certain jobs we can share between both teams, but doubling the job, that means I will lose speciality – so having more people is a sensible idea.”