In the early 1980s, a successful series called “Con ocho basta” was broadcast on TVE for all Spaniards. It narrated the tribulations of a family with eight offspring and their problems in sharing the same space. Something similar is coming in F1.
The marks come back. Audi and Porsche heat up the band, there is talk of the Chinese Geely hand in hand with Alpine, and even Lotus for being part of the industrial conglomerate of these in the Chinese common market. Honda, which never left completely, they say come back, and there was a visit of a group of Japanese leaders to the Red Bull Ring last weekend. The Japanese are very Japanese, and this oxymoron attends to a self-assigned status by the children of the rising sun. The Japs think of themselves as the English of the East. They say that they are not Asian, but Japanese, and look around with their noses pointed to the sky. The Honda Masques rarely leave their island, and when they do, it’s to deal with important matters.
After a long and very hard desert crossing with notorious failures, on October 2, 2020 they announced that they were getting out of all this fuss. Suddenly the first victories began to arrive; or worse/better yet: the first title in 2021 and with the announcement already made. The Honda engine went from being cursed to being almost more desired by the entire grid, due to the sweetness of its power delivery and its performance in the middle zone. If we add the photo of Max Verstappen applauding to the logo of him with a golden crown on his head, we already have it covered. Those of Honda have rethought all this and in view of the play of other major players, wasting a unique opportunity that they have at hand would be clumsy if they can afford it.
Red Bull will stop using its original Honda engines in 2026 with the arrival of the new regulations
Today Honda is still in the world championship, although in a sneaky way. The curritos of Red Bull Powertrains They assemble, disassemble and maintain engines that are an extension of the life of the Hondas that arrived in 2015. Every time one of these engines breaks, they do not keep it in the Milton-Keynes factory, but rather it is sent to Japan. There they open it, analyze it, and repair it or do an autopsy depending on its state. In exchange, at least in a visible way, Honda places some stickers on each side of the engine cover, at the height of the exhausts. In them you can read the acronym of the Honda Racing Corporation, or HRC, less known in the car world, but very popular in MotoGP.
But there’s a problem
If the rumor is true, and everything indicates that it is, Red Bull will stop using its Honda-sourced engines in 2026 with the arrival of the new regulations on the matter. The energetic will be, in principle, the recipients of the propellants that Porsche invents. Outside part of the fact that they end up allying with what Audi assembles in a parallel way, Red Bull is in principle the formation destined to give joy to the VAG group. There are always two or three winning teams, and the rest are the ones that get a podium rebound, and with a lot of luck an isolated victory if the stars align. If Audi ends up staying with Sauber, it will cost them a lot of money, and above all time to be at the desired level.
In other words, if they want to win, it will take between three and five seasons and spending money like the big teams to be at the top. From the hand of Red Bull this will cost them much less time and money, and there you have the example of Honda that corroborates it. You want to win? It is easier and cheaper to ally yourself with someone who already does it than to set up a winning structure from a party wall.
The ball now passes to Honda. When the Japs arrived and seemed more lost than an octopus in a garage. It took them years to understand the garden in which they had planted their feet, and faithful to their tradition, slowly but surely they ended up at the top. Congratulations. The problem is that apart from those redbulized, they don’t motorize anyone else. It is possible that they end up installed only behind the AlphaTauri, a team condemned not to win or to do it very punctually. Those of Honda do not stop at bars and if they return to their rights they will not do it to go through what they suffered with McLaren, they have already learned their lesson, and it will not be to lose structurally either.
With Ferrari with its own engines, Mercedes with its own engines, Red Bull with Porsche engines, Aston Martin inaccessible for obvious reasons, Alpine with its own engines… they only have the only team that has won at least one race in recent years: AlphaTauri. It is not about underestimating Haas and Williams, but they have been years away from being able to even step on wood and after winning last year, and presumably at least this 2022, Honda will feel very bad about going to close grids from minute one. So they have only one option left: McLaren. There they seem unlikely to accept this with the fresh memory of the sporting and financial ruin that was suffered between 2015 and 2018.
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Either that or throw the rest away, buy the fullness of AlphaTauri, and turn it back into… Honda Racing Team, with the resurrection of what was once a full brand team. The compromise would be costly, difficult to digest, and uncertain success. However, the Japanese would be in control of the situation, and without disputes with unwanted partners who blamed them for all their ills. The Japanese, according to their culture, usually prefer to be alone than in bad company. It is not that their companies have been bad but rather inadequate, improvable, and with attitudes more in line with their desires.
So according to the approach, no one should be surprised by new Honda agreements to provide a third team in the coming years before the new engines arrive, or that they end up mounting something of their own, as a way of fleeing forward. As a general rule important things usually happen in the shadowsout of sight of onlookers, but when guys of the caliber of Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe, Honda Chairman Seiji Kuraishi, HRC Chairman Koji Watanabe, and HRC Chairman Yasuaki Asaki (according to Joe Saward ) is because something is cooking here, and that they show their faces may be the sign that everything is already settled and is ready for signature.
Lucubration? Mindfuck? Wet dreams? In the triplet of “Eight is enough” they barely fit and in each chapter things always happened; They spent more than being three or four. Sit back and wait, something is cooking here.
Photos: Red Bull Content Pool