Gasly: Red Bull-Honda showing 'really good potential'

Despite a session-ending spin with an hour to go, Pierre Gasly was in good spirits having finally got his hands on the new Red Bull RB15, completing a solid 92 laps on day two of pre-season testing…

The Frenchman set the seventh fastest time of the day, on Pirelli's medium C3 compound tyre, and declared himself happy with his performance before a spin “caught me by surprise”.

“It was really amazing to do the winter break and I was really excited to get back and do my first day with Red Bull,” said Gasly. “There is some really good potential and some things to understand with our package, the first feedback is good.

“It’s too early to talk about expectations. At the moment we need to understand the overall performance of our package. It is quite important for us that our first feedback and first impressions are quite good.

“Out of Turn 10 I went on the power and shifted to fifth and lost it. I was pushing the car to the limit and playing on the limits and went on throttle, lost the rear, and that was it. It was quite annoying to lose the hour of testing.

“[But] we tested some really positive things, some others negative, and now we need to understand a bit more.”

After Honda's encouraging season with Toro Rosso last year, Red Bull followed their junior team in agreeing a deal to run the Japanese manufacturer’s power units this season.

Gasly has experience with Honda, having worked with them in Super Formula in Japan and then again at Toro Rosso, and has been impressed by the progress they have made so far.

“They did a really good job over the winter and we have done a lot of laps. Also looking at Toro Rosso they’ve done a lot of laps so we need to use all the feedback.

“But so far we are really happy with the job they have done [and] we are really pleased.”

Max Verstappen returns to the Red Bull cockpit tomorrow, with Gasly due to complete the final day of the first test on Thursday.