Honda F1 boss Toyoharu Tanabe isn’t giving anything away about the Japanese manufacturer’s potential plans involving Red Bull Racing for 2019.

An FIA May 15 deadline by which the Milton Keynes-based outfit must finalise its power unit plans for next year is fast approaching, with current supplier Renault unwilling to wait forever on its partner’s decision.

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Red Bull is keeping its options open with Honda however as it monitors the engine manufacturer’s progress with junior bull team Toro Rosso.

Honda’s relationship with the Faenza-based outfit enjoyed a promising start, with clear progress made by its V6 hybrid engine in terms of reliability and power.

Honda vows to keep ‘climbing steps’, until it wins!

“Toro Rosso is open to new ideas and listens to us attentively,” Tanabe told France’s Auto Hebdo.

“We listen to them just as carefully. Together we’re working hard to achieve our goal.”

However, when asked how the Red Bull talks are proceeding, Tanabe was guarded.

“I’m focused on this season and on the technical partnership with Toro Rosso. As for everything else, decisions are made in the top management of Honda.”

Toro Rosso team boss Franz Tost is equally happy with Honda’s achievements to date. Also, rather than implementing significant updates over the course of the season, the Italian squad follows an incremental approach for developing its STR13 chassis.

“Other teams work with two or three major updates per season,” Tost told Speed Week.

“We pursue a different philosophy. We want to make the car faster every time we make small improvements.”

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Whatever you do, don’t think about David Cameron and a dead pig. I know, I know it’s like trying not to think of an elephant, but the fact is that the allegations that the Prime Minister may have put a ‘private part of his anatomy” into a dead pig’s mouth as part of an initiation ritual for an elite drinking society at Oxford University are actually a very serious matter, and it’s all about corruption and the nature of elected power, and it would help if we could all just calm down for a second and stop giggling. Don’t think I don’t see you at the back there.

You know, I feel for David Cameron today, I really do. Politicians’ private sex lives should never be used against them – unless their particular proclivities implicate them in gross hypocrisy or they have harmed another human being. If the rumours are true, it’s unlikely that the pig in question was hurt by the Prime Minister’s ministrations, given that it was already missing its limbs and torso.

Sniggering aside, this is unlikely to hurt David Cameron in the long run. He’s not looking for re-election, and besides, everyone knows posh people get up to weird sex stuff. Weird sex stuff is as British as weak tea and racism. When I was at Oxford, it was an open secret that the posh kids had naughty parties, and, of course, so did the rest of us – the difference was the much lower budget, and the fact that the posh kids didn’t seem to enjoy it as much as we did. It all seemed to be more about getting on than getting off. You didn’t shag or not shag the pig’s face because that was what you were into, you did it because you had your eye on a safe seat in Dorset in 20 years’ time and you needed to make the right friends.

There is a reason that David Cameron is allowed to hold office when everyone assumes he spent the 1980s taking drugs and getting up to weird things with his Eton mates, but Jeremy Corbyn is considered unelectable because he didn’t sing the national anthem last week. Cameron is part of a select group of people to whom different rules apply, and he knows it, and his friends know it, and the tabloids know it, and the whole cosy British political machine knows it. This is why Corbyn will spend the next five years being savaged for having a slightly rumpled tie by the same newspapers that reported on the dead pig allegations under the title “the making of an extraordinary Prime Minister”.

The thing that’s really horrifying about what has already been dubbed the ‘Hameron’ scandal is that it demonstrates what entitlement of this kind actually means, and how embarrassing it all is. There are people out there who can spend their early twenties in close proximity to cocaine and popping their peckers in offal and not even consider for a second that there might be anyone better placed to run the country. These are people who know the rules don’t apply to them, who know they can do whatever they want and still end up in charge. 

After fulfilling their media duties on Thursday, teams and drivers got down to business Friday morning in Azerbaijan.

Check out our gallery of the day’s action at scenic Baku.

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The father and son duo of Lawrence and Lance Stroll remain committed to Williams for the future despite the massive under-performance of the team’s troubled FW41.

The Grove-based outfit has been nowhere near holding its own at the top end of Formula 1’s mid-field since the season got underway in Melbourne.

Lance Stroll salvaged four points in Baku last month, the team’s total tally so far, but the feat was the result of circumstances and favourable terrain for Williams.

However, the bitter disappointment linked to the FW41 and the difficulties in pulling the team out of the doldrums haven’t yet enticed the Stroll family to search for an alternative to Williams for 2019.

“We’re not there yet,” Stroll Sr told Motorsport.com in Spain.

“I believe in Williams, I believe in the team. Clearly they got it wrong so far.

“I do believe this is a rude awakening, and hopefully it will bring the best out of the people, and they’ll fix it. I’m sure not as quick as we’d like, and not as quick as they’d like either.

Williams issues can’t be fixed in 24 hours – Kubica

“But we’re not going anywhere else,” he insisted.

“Obviously the car clearly isn’t where we hoped and wanted to be, it’s quite a way off. We struggled when we came here for testing, and we’re still struggling. So it’s pretty apparent to the eye what’s wrong with the car.

“I gather everyone is trying their best, there’s a great sense of urgency in the team. It’s not that they don’t recognise the problem, everybody does.

“A blind person could see the problem. I know they’re working hard to fix it.”

Assessing his son’s performance year-to-date, Lawrence Stroll casts a positive view, underling Lance’s 100 percent finishing record and the 19-year-old’s consistently gritty opening laps.

“I think his performance, based on the car he has, has been phenomenal,” said the Canadian billionaire.

“This was his fifth great race. He can’t qualify the car much better than where he qualifies it, but he does amazingly well on that opening lap.

“I think he’s beaten his teammate all five times, and beaten a lot of people that the car is not capable of beating. So from a performance point of view with Lance, we couldn’t be happier,” he added.

“Obviously we’d like a better car to be at the front of the grid! But with the equipment he has, I don’t think he could be doing a better job.”

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A rehabilitated Romain Grosjean followed up his promising qualifying performance with a splendid fourth-place finish in the Austrian Grand Prix, achieving his first points of the season and Haas’ best ever F1 result.

In a year marked by misfortune and mishaps, the French driver steered clear of trouble on Sunday, producing a difficult but fine drive that enabled him to outrace team mate Kevin Magnussen and conclude his day as ‘best of the rest’.

It was a long time coming for Grosjean who expressed a sigh of relief when all was said and done.

“Definitely feeling better than we have been recently,” he enthused.

“It is great, our 50th Grand Prix, finishing P4 and P5, a best ever result for the team.

Verstappen’s dramatic home win for Red Bull amid Mercedes nightmare

“I got a lot of criticism but the team has always been behind me but this weekend was just what we wanted to stop that negative spiral and eventually try and go back to a positive one.

“It was mainly for me and my boys and for my team. Here we are and showing that we can still do some really good racing.

“Obviously I feel better now, I am happy that we are starting to get some luck and I feel for Lewis [Hamilton] and Valtteri [Bottas] and Daniel [Ricciardo] but it was just places we could get.

“Just going back home and knowing my boys are proud of me, it makes me go ‘Yes!’.”

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Ferrari pulled off a dream front-row lock-out for their home race, the Italian Grand Prix, in qualifying on Saturday.

And while Sebastian Vettel was delighted to see the team achieve a 1-2 over their Mercedes rivals, he certainly wasn’t happy to miss out on pole for himself.

Vettel had topped the first two rounds of qualifying, but when it came to the pole shoot-out he finished up 0.161s slower than his team Kimi Raikkonen.

The Finn’s lap clocked in at 1:19.119s making for an average speed of 263.587kph – the fastest ever recorded in an official Formula 1 session.

“This is great for tomorrow,” said Raikkonen, before sounding his traditional note of caution for Sunday’s race. “But it’s only job half done.

“Hopefully tomorrow everything will go smoothly and we end up in the same positions. Hopefully it will be as good as today.”

It’s Raikkonen’s 18th career pole position, and his first since he started from the front in Monaco in 2017. Before that it was France 2008. At 38 years of age, it makes him the oldest pole sitter since Nigel Mansell in 1994.

“I can’t think of a better place to be on pole than our home Grand Prix in front of all the Tifosi,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where we go around the world, but obviously here, home grand prix, it’s full of the great Tifosi.”

• Raikkonen heads Ferrari 1-2 lockout for home GP

But Vettel was looking distinctly less thrilled by the outcome of qualifying. For his last run of the day he had been sent out first, which allowed Raikkonen to get the benefit of the slipstream.

After being told he had finished in second place, Vettel snapped “We speak after” over the team radio, although he denied it was due to being unhappy about being sent out in front of Raikkonen.

“We have an order that changes every week,” he told reporters afterwards. “This weekend was Kimi to go second, simple.”

“Clearly I wasn’t happy, but I don’t tell you why,” he continued, denying that he planned to ask the team to impose team orders for the start of tomorrow’s race. “No, I don’t think anything related to that.

“It’s a good result for the team,” he insisted. “Not entirely happy with my last run, but I think Kimi was just a little too fast in the end.

“It is always like this in Monza and I think for him it was in a sweet spot,” Vettel added. “For now it’s great to have both cars at the front.

“To be honest it was not a tidy lap. The other laps were actually better,” he admitted. “I lost a bit at the first chicane, second chicane, the Lesmos, pretty much a bit everywhere.

“The last sector was okay but not fantastic, so just not a good lap and not good enough obviously. I was lucky to get second instead of third.

“But it was just not good enough,” he reiterated.

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Renault’s Cyril Abiteboul says the French outfit needs to improve its understanding of Pirelli’s tyres after both its drivers struggled on their respective rubber in Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix.

Renault scored a double-points finish in the Principality, with Nico Hulkenberg coming home P8 while Carlos Sainz rounded off the top ten.

While the former was satisfied overall with his result, the latter was left frustrated by the team’s strategy call, questioning its decision to fit the ultrasoft compound during his single pit stop with 62 laps left on the board.

‘Bitter’ Sainz never on the right tyre at the right time

In hindsight, the Spaniard believed his crew should have gone for the supersoft tyre but Abiteboul disagreed.

“I think moving to supersoft rather than ultrasoft would have been even worse towards the end,” said the Renault Sport F1 boss.

“At the time we were doing it, it was maybe not clear why we were doing it, but towards the end it was clear that it was the right thing to do.

“It was a very difficult race for him, he also had to let Nico past, so Nico could execute his race.

“We saw again that it’s so difficult to read into these tyres – it was looking like we were going to have a very, very difficult race with Nico, and suddenly the tyres came back to life,” he added.

The French outfit consolidated its fourth-place position in the Constructors’ standings over McLaren, but Abiteboul insists tyres are an issue the team needs to get on top of asap.

“Despite the fact it is a much better result than last year in Monaco, we were not as competitive as recent races and more work needs to be done on tyre management and understanding.

“In the current situation we are almost better to start P11 and have a free tyre choice than to start within the first ten with the qualifying tyres.

“Clearly some teams ahead of us manage to make it work, so it is possible.”

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Christian Horner says Red Bull’s drivers are forced to pull out all the stops in qualifying to make up for their Renault’s engine’s relative weakness in the Saturday afternoon session.

Renault is still trailing Mercedes and Ferrari in the engine department, but in addition to its power deficit the French power unit also lacks the specific engine modes that its rivals resort to in Q3.

Without the relative weakness Horner is convinced Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen would be consistently challenging for outright wins on Sundays.

Ricciardo hails a race with ‘the best risk-reward of the year’

“I think the key thing for us is trying to increase competitiveness on a Saturday afternoon, because grid position is so important,” Horner said.

“It puts too much pressure on the drivers in Q3, because they’re having to find even more performance, because we don’t have the ability to go with our rivals’ engine modes.

“Hopefully around Montreal time, there is the next engine introduction. We are hoping for a performance increase.”

Horner admitted however that last weekend’s venue, where overtaking is at a premium, emphasized the team’s RB14’s deficit in qualifying trim.

“I think track position is everything at a circuit like this. Unfortunately the damage done on a Saturday compromises your race at a track like this on a Sunday.

“Looking at the pace of the car it looked on a par with what Lewis [Hamilton] could do, particularly in the second half of the race.

“The problem is when you are caught up in traffic you are damaging the car, when you are clean air it’s a lot easier to manage.

“[Daniel] was coming through the backmarkers and we actually turned the engine down.

“So I think the encouraging thing is the upgrades have all worked reasonably well this weekend and once again we’ve demonstrated we got a competitive car on a Sunday afternoon.”

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