Honda stays with Red Bull until 2025

We clearly felt that the regrets were there at the end of the 2021 season. Certainly, the Japanese firm bowed out on a title, but the triumph had the bitter taste of farewell. It had already been a few months since she had officially announced her departure from the F1 at the end of the exercise. Grateful to those who had allowed her to return to success and to clear an honor quite tainted by an association with McLaren having turned into a fiasco, she had however decided not to give up Red Bull Racing, transferring the intellectual property of its V6 turbo/hybrids to it.

If the Milton Keynes-based team was, however, going to have to pay for the firm's services, including for the development necessary for the transition from E5 fuel to E10 fuel, it was not left on foot. The strategy then was that the new Red Bull Powertrains division would receive full technical support from Honda in 2022, before building the engines from Honda parts at its Milton Keynes factory in 2023, 2024 and 2025, while working simultaneously on its own project for the new F1 engine which will come into force in 2026. 

Max Verstappen with Yamamoto. © Mark Thompson/Getty Images

That was the initial plan which seems to no longer be relevant. Even if no communication from Japan has yet come to confirm the turnaround, it nevertheless seems certain that Honda has now decided that the program put in place for 2022 will extend until the end of the current cycle of engine regulations in end of fiscal year 2025. During this period, the Japanese will continue to maintain and supply the engines from Japan.

It was Helmut Marko, the boss of Red Bull Motorsport, who spilled the beans during an interview with Autorevue magazine. “We have now found a completely different solution to the one originally envisioned, explains the Austrian manager. The engines will be made in Japan until 2025, we won't touch them at all. This means that the rights and all these things will remain with the Japanese, which is important for 2026 because it makes us newcomers. Over the course of our ever-increasing successes, a certain questioning has taken place among the Japanese. And also that they could of course use the knowledge about batteries for their electrification phase. It was initially planned that they would only make our engines for 2022. Now it has been decided that this will continue until 2025, which of course is a huge advantage for us. »

Yamamoto as reinforcement

The move also removes any complications, particularly in terms of quality control, that could have arisen from moving the construction of the power units to the UK, and allows Red Bull Powertrains to focus more on its 2026 project. At worst, it will benefit from concessions – a higher budget ceiling – made to manufacturers entering 2026 if it builds its own engine; at best, it will have more freedom to collaborate with its possible new driving partner.

If the details of the new arrangements have yet to be finalized, a new agreement will easily be found with Honda which, remember, has officially withdrawn from competition in order to pursue its objectives in terms of climate change. As engine performance development is frozen, no R&D or financial investment is necessary and any costs can be charged to Red Bull Powertrains. As a direct result or not of this change of direction, Masashi Yamamoto, director of Honda Motorsport, left Tochigi to create his own consultancy firm in order to serve as a bridge between Red Bull and Japan, thus extending the continuity between the partners. 

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