Photo: Honda
Max Verstappen, the young Dutch racing driver, is convinced that Honda is now close to matching Mercedes on engine power as Formula One heads into the winter break.
When Red Bull Racing chose to switch from Renault to Honda power for the 2019 season, many questioned whether the move would pay off.
But in their first season together, Red Bull and Honda went on to win three races, all with Verstappen at the wheel. That’s more than the Dutchman had ever won in a single year, and recently the manufacturer committed to continue providing the team with engines through 2021.
Verstappen also managed to take the first two pole positions of his career in 2019, something that had eluded him despite occasional race-winning performances from 2016-2018, as Honda was able to bring the sheer performance to compete at the highest level that Renault had lacked.
Still, Mercedes has remained the largely undisputed king of power units in F1’s turbocharged hybrid engine era (for a variety of reasons that don’t necessarily have to do with manufacturing ability). Mercedes’ place at the top was on occasion challenged by Ferrari, who many believed had the most powerful engine in 2018, but whose advantage seems to have been missing in the final quarter of 2019 following FIA investigations of potentially illegal designs.
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Max Verstappen holds up his 3rd-place trophy at the 2020 United States Grand Prix
Photo: Honda
Now Honda may be the Silver Arrows’ biggest rival on the engine front, especially after Gasly was able to out-drag Lewis Hamilton down the final stretch in Brazil to cinch his career-first podium.
“We are very close to Mercedes,” said Verstappen. “[Honda] have been working flat-out and the improvement we have made with the last two was a big one.”
Verstappen added that it was refreshing to be working with a manufacturer who would actually meet its stated targets. When Red Bull was still powered by Renault, the French company would regularly claim an upcoming upgrade would shave off significant lap time, only for it to make relatively little difference.
“What I think is very positive is that we had a target throughout the year and we have always been at the same level or above the target, which we’ve never had before,” Verstappen explained. “So that’s a good thing. [Honda] have always been very honest in what we would get, and sometimes we would even be a little bit better — which of course is even better!”
Even better were the reliability improvements. In 2018, both Verstappen and then-teammate Daniel Ricciardo retired many times throughout the year as a result of engine issues. The 2019 season, however, came with substantial improvements on that front.
“The reliability throughout the whole year, we have never retired on a Honda problem so I think that is very positive,” Verstappen concluded. “We also lost a lot of points because of reliability issues in the past, which were both car and engine, and I think we have improved both sides. I am very pleased with that because at the end of the day, if you want to fight for a world championship you can’t retire on those kind of things.”
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