I think that's indeed too optimistic!
You make a very good point that points are not the entire story. So let me give my view on that. Maybe I have too long a memory but after winter testing and Gasly's random 4th place at Bahrain, there was talk of Red Bull switching to Honda mid-season, Toro Rosso would fight Red Bull on track, Toro Rosso was definitely
not sacrificing their season to help out Honda and a lot more bla bla. All of this perpetuated by Honda and Red Bull PR folk. When things started going south, all of a sudden the story switched and people seemed to just accept the new reality of TR as being just a test mule for RB. It's revisionism and everybody just seemed to go along with it.
And then there's the infamous 'Canada upgrade' which was widely reported as the deciding factor for Red Bull to with Honda for 2019. There was talk of 'over 40 HP extra' and that the engine definitely leapfrogged Renault and could maybe even rival Ferrari. The media frenzy was insane, and nobody seemed to point out the obvious: nothing changed. The team scored fewer points, didn't qualify or race any better and only ended up getting more grid penalties because parts kept getting replaced. Again, somehow people saw that as a good sign in some twisted way. The reports kept talking about the 'much lauded Canada update' but nobody ever expanded on what that actually did. It didn't seem to make the engine more reliable, or faster.
My hypothesis: Honda gets a lot of (very undeserved in my view) slack for some reason, both in the media and the fan'osphere. Is it because they're some kind of underdog? Is it because they're Japanese and they are somehow more respected than the French of Renault? If the Renault guy said anything he would get shouted down and nobody would believe a word he said. But now somehow almost everyone swallows everything that comes out of the Honda camp. Helmut Marko is almost never taken seriously but when he says something positive about Honda people suddenly think he's on to something. I'm simply baffled by it all!
