Honda left Canada encouraged by the performance of their latest Power Unit, with the Japanese manufacturer delivering its first big upgrade of the season for the Toro Rosso team.
Although Pierre Gasly suffered an issue on Saturday and was forced to switch back to the older-spec for qualifying, team-mate Brendon Hartley was just a few tenths shy of making it through to Q3 for the top-ten shoot-out.
Gasly was able to switch back to the new engine ahead of Sunday's race but that meant a back-row start for the Frenchman. However he was able to recover in the race to finish in 11th, less than five seconds off Sauber's Charles Leclerc in tenth.
That left Gasly with a positive feeling for his home race in France in a fortnight: "The new power unit seems to work well… we overtook multiple cars on the straight, so it looks promising for the upcoming races.
"Honda worked very hard to bring the upgrade to Canada and they did a fantastic job!
"Now we need to put everything together and find some consistency, because the next race is my home grand prix in Le Castellet – I’m really excited to go racing there."
Honda's Toyoharu Tanaba described the weekend as "mixed" given the issue on Saturday and Hartley opening lap retirement following a crash, but he too was lifted by the "noticeable" peformance boost of their new engine.
"A weekend of positives and negatives: on the positive side, the PU updates we brought here delivered a noticeable increase in performance, which is a good sign for the next stage of the season.
"On the negative side, we had a reliability issue on Pierre’s PU on Saturday and Brendon’s race was very short. However, Pierre had a strong race from the back of the grid and now we will focus on ensuring both drivers can perform well, starting with Pierre’s home race in two weeks’ time in France."
