Gasly: Honda compromises will help in 2019

Pierre Gasly hopes some of the compromises and sacrifices Honda made with Toro Rosso last season will help him in his maiden season at Red Bull Racing this year.

Gasly is replacing Daniel Ricciardo, with the Aussie making the move to Renault for 2019.

The French driver had a full season with Honda last term, at Toro Rosso. When it was announced that Red Bull would be using Honda's power unit this season, the Japanese manufacturer started to make little compromises and essentially using the Red Bull reserve team as an experiment for the more important 2019 season.

"It might compromise in a good way with more performance, so this is not a bad thing," Gasly explained to Crash.net. "For sure, this season (2018) we maybe could have had a couple more opportunities to take, without the penalties we took, but we looked at the big picture.

"As I've said before, there is more to gain from this kind of testing for next year as we'll have much better and higher targets with Red Bull. If it can give us the possibility of figthing for podiums or wins that clearly we are trying things to help with Toro Rosso. It is not ideal for us but it is better in the short-term."

Gasly may be used to the Honda engine, but it will be a new enviroment for the French driver to have to get used to, and a new team-mate in Max Verstappen.

"It is going to be quite different but it will be good to see how they work and to get the relationship with the engineers inside the team as it is different," Gasly added.

"A different way of working but also the British people mainly compared to the Italian people working here. It is going to be a different philosophy and the more I can work with the team, the earlier it is, the better for me next season (2019)."