After the last round in Russia, Formula 1 now starts to travel further from its mainly European base for the final races of the year, starting with this weekend’s Turkish Grand Prix, an event that returned to the calendar last year. The Istanbul Park circuit is situated in the suburbs of the Asian side of the city and is located in a hilly setting. The track itself has a good mix of all corner types from low to high speed, the most famous of which is the long multi-apex Turn 8 which places a lot of stress on the driver’s neck. At the last race, Max took his grid penalty and although he lost the championship lead, the gap to Hamilton is very small and now we can simply focus on getting the best possible result at each remaining race, starting this weekend in Turkey. 

On the original calendar, this weekend should have seen us racing in the Japanese Grand Prix and it’s a real shame we cannot do so, because of concerns over the pandemic. Everyone at Honda was very much looking forward to racing competitively at our home track, with our Japanese driver Yuki in his F1 debut season, which is also our last one in the sport. We know the Japanese fans are also disappointed and so we have prepared various on-line events specifically for them, as well as something special at the Istanbul track. We are keen to get a good result with all four drivers across both teams in Turkey and we have been working hard and studying last year’s data to be as well prepared as possible.