Honda exited Formula One in spectacular fashion at the end of last season by becoming the first non-Mercedes engine supplier to a hybrid-era champion. Reports last week said that despite setting up its own powertrain division, Red Bull is trying to persuade Honda to supply them with parts from Japan until the current power unit regulations end in 2025. This week, Honda confirmed to The Drive that it indeed had been asked, but hasn’t made a decision yet.
Honda and Red Bull had already agreed on a delivery program for units until 2022 at the beginning of the development stop, so that the teams lacked nothing to get the cars running. There will also be trackside and operational support from Honda to Red Bull and AlphaTauri, basically the same as when they were officially an F1 supplier.
Red Bull then agreed to buy Honda’s intellectual property for its power unit designs along with its Milton Keynes factory. This facility was used exclusively for the F1 project and is just around the corner from Red Bull’s own base in the same city. Since then there has been a flurry of HR activity, with a large number of Red Bull employees being lured away by High Performance Powertrains – Mercedes’ F1 and Formula E powertrain builders. It seemed like Red Bull was pretty serious about using 2022 to ramp up their own production.
However, an interview with Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko last week in Austrian magazine Autorevue left him somewhat upset (not the first time it has happened). He said, “[Red Bull] have now found a solution that is completely different from what we originally planned. The engines will be manufactured in Japan ready for use by 2025 – we won’t touch them at all. It will mean that [intellectual property rights] and all those things stay with the Japanese, which is important for 2026 because it makes us newcomers.”
If you’re wondering what that last bit means, then there’s a rule for the next era of F1 power units, when the MGU-H will be phased out and electric power will increase from 2026 onwards. It’s meant to try to lure one brand – in this case, almost certainly Porsche – into joining by initially making them less constrained by the power unit development budget cap that other teams will be subject to. So it would be a strategic decision to do so, not just because Red Bull might struggle to supply its own gensets in just a year.
When that quote came out, some outlets reported that what Marko said happened. However, The Drive has reached out to both Red Bull and Honda to verify the story, which seems far from set in stone.
For their part, Red Bull downplayed the story, telling me that despite Marko’s comments, nothing was agreed. Honda have reached out to me to confirm that “Honda will be supporting Red Bull Powertrains in building the 2022 PU and will also provide trackside and race support to HRC throughout the 2022 season, I have not decided at this time.”
So: Red Bull asked, Honda isn’t sure yet and the situation isn’t much clearer than it was at the beginning.
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