What will the Red Bull Formula 1 deal do for Aston Martin?

In that sense, this is a very similar deal to what Red Bull made with another luxury automaker, Infiniti, in the dominant years 2011-2013.

That ended when Renault set up its own F1 team and Red Bull lost its status as a factory engine outfit.

One key difference this time around is that most of the people who follow F1 already know what Aston Martin is, while at Infiniti there were many who still didn’t know what the product was, even after being in Sebastian for several years Vettel’s championship cars had played a prominent role.

The comparisons with the Infiniti partnership are all the more accurate when you consider that Christian Horner did both deals with the same man. Andy Palmer was CEO of Infiniti and is now CEO of Aston Martin.

The story Aston Martin wants to tell is about innovation and technology. The company will embed engineers on the Red Bull campus in Milton Keynes, which is just a half-hour drive from the Aston Martin base. The partnership will also work on other projects such as the Aston Martin Valkyrie supercar with a limited edition of 15 vehicles, $ 2.6 million apiece purchased by buyers. The car is tailored to the size of its owner.

The Valkyrie is Aston’s 1,000-horsepower V12-powered rival to the recently announced Mercedes-AMG Project One, which shows a new trend for F1-inspired, limited-edition supercars priced in the millions to sell to the super-rich.

The halo effect of Aston’s engineers and designers working with Adrian Newey and his staff is clearly a compelling proposition for Aston Martin management and gives the street car brand a certain shine in the eyes of buyers.

The two companies claim that together 110 new jobs will be created to work together on new supercar projects at a new Advanced Performance Center in Milton Keynes.

There is only one problem: the engine

The Aston Martin Red Bull Racing F1 team has a serious short term problem to solve, namely finding a competitive engine. It will lose its supply of Renault units from the end of 2018, and although it will test the factory Honda engines in the Toro Rosso next season, few hope this will be the silver bullet that marks Red Bull’s weakness in this area completed .

Any noise from sources with knowledge of the Honda F1 project suggests that the corrections needed to change management culture and make the engine competitive are absent and there is little evidence that this will change .

Another tough year is slated for 2018, and it would require a massive leap in confidence – or the ability of Red Bull and its agents (like Mario Illien) to intervene directly in the program over the next 12 months – to make Honda a viable bet to be made for the main Red Bull team in 2019.

Discussions about future F1 engine technology continue, driven by Ross Brawn and his team. However, the latest noises are that manufacturers appear to be pushing for the continuation of the MGU-H component of the hybrid system, which is the costly and complex element.

Palmer has stopped including Aston on the engine building side as the company is tiny compared to Mercedes and even Ferrari.

But he was rather optimistic: “The discussions about the engines are of interest to us, but only if the circumstances are right.

“We’re not about to enter an engine war with no constraints on cost or hours of operation, but we believe we would be interested in getting involved if the FIA ​​can create the right environment.”

The power unit has always been the weak point of the Red Bull Racing proposal and it will continue to do so through 2020 (i.e. three seasons).

It concerns the star drivers of the team, Daniel Riccardo and Max Verstappen, who both want to win urgently.

By 2021 there should be some sort of independent engine maker like Cosworth that can deliver competitive engines at competitive prices. It’s one of the key pillars of the F1 plan that Brawn is trying to develop with the FIA ​​rule-makers and makers.

Red Bull’s owner Dietrich Mateschitz is frustrated with this era of Formula 1 hybrid engines, their cost, and what he thinks is their divisibility and lack of entertainment value.

His investment in Red Bull Racing had to increase with the loss of prize money and Infiniti funds (as of 2014). It is estimated that the net spending for Red Bull is around $ 40 million a year, compared to $ 10 million in 2013.

So you can see why there has been pressure from above to bring in a title sponsor to help bring that spending down.

If Mateschitz ends up with an uncompetitive Honda engine in 2019 and the new rules of 2021 don’t move the engine formula in the right direction, it’s fair to imagine him thinking about packing up in Formula 1.

He has threatened it in the past, but if his key indicators are all pointing in the wrong direction, maybe this time he would stop.

This contrasts with the growth of the F1 business under Liberty Media. As more revenue is generated, costs are brought under control so that net expenses are minimized, and the Red Bull brand reaches more and younger audiences, the decision to leave the company becomes more difficult.