Photo: Honda
Red Bull Racing and Honda have agreed that the former will continue running the latter’s engines in Formula 1, even though Honda will be bowing out of the sport at the end of the upcoming 2021 season.
Honda had rejoined F1 in 2015 and teamed up with the Red Bull organization three years later by first supplying engines to sister team, Toro Rosso (now rebranded as AlphaTauri). It began providing engines to the main Red Bull Racing team in 2019 and since then, Honda F1 engines have won five races, its first victories since the early 1990s.
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However, Honda announced last October that it would end its involvement in F1, leaving both Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri without an engine supplier. Fortunately for the racing organization, Honda said it would be open to allowing Red Bull to acquire the IP for its power units and run the project.
This was fortunate because Red Bull burned its bridges with former supplier Renault, and the other two engine manufacturers in F1 — Mercedes and Ferrari — do not want to give Red Bull Racing, one of their main rivals, any help in the engine department.
F1 engine freeze
Photo: Honda
While Red Bull has the resources to continue using Honda F1 engines, it doesn’t have the resources to fund their development, which is extremely expensive and requires technical expertise the organization lacks. Red Bull thus sought to establish an engine freeze that would maintain the engines as they are from the start of 2022 to the end of 2024.
Despite some initial disagreements, the teams recently and unanimously approved the engine freeze, leading to Red Bull officially forming a new company — Red Bull Powertrains Limited — to run the Honda F1 engine project project. The new division will be operated from Red Bull’s base of operations in Milton Keynes.
“This agreement represents a significant step for Red Bull in its Formula 1 journey,” said Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. “We were understandably disappointed when Honda made the decision to leave the sport as an engine manufacturer, as our relationship yielded immediate success, but we are grateful for their support in facilitating this new agreement.”
“Honda has invested significantly in hybrid technology to ensure the supply of competitive power units to both teams,” Horner added. “We now begin the work of bringing the power unit division in-house and integrating the new facilities and personnel into our Technology Campus.”
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Why is Honda leaving F1?
Photo: Honda
Honda’s intention to leave Formula 1 came as a surprise to some as the manufacturer had, after joining the Red Bull family, just begun to enjoy success in F1 again. But the automaker said it could no longer invest resources into F1 while also fully committing itself to be carbon neutral by 2050. Nonetheless, it didn’t want to leave Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri out to dry.
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“As a company that has been involved in Formula 1 for several decades, we felt it was the right thing to do to help our two current teams and indeed the sport as a whole,” explained Koji Watanabe, Honda’s chief officer of brand and communication operations. “By allowing Red Bull Racing and Scuderia AlphaTauri to use our F1 PU technology it should ensure they can race competitively, which is also good for the sport and the fans.”
Kurt Verlin was born in France and lives in the United States. Throughout his life he was always told French was the language of romance, but it was English he fell in love with. He likes cats, music, cars, 30 Rock, Formula 1, and pretending to be a race car driver in simulators; but most of all, he just likes to write about it all. See more articles by Kurt.
