Formula 1

HONDA TARGETS 2021 WORLD TITLE WITH RED BULL

Published

2 years ago

19/01/2021

Aya Mauri F1 Author

HONDA TARGETS 2021 WORLD TITLE WITH RED BULL

Honda – Toyoharu Tanabe says the Japanese carmaker is targeting the world championship for 2021 with Red Bull.

Honda will withdraw from Formula 1 at the end of the 2021 season, leaving Red Bull’s teams without an engine partner.

The Japanese manufacturer rejoined the F1 grid in 2015 as McLaren’s engine partner, ending an absence of six seasons following the withdrawal of its underperforming works team after the 2008 season.

Despite lofty expectations, it struggled massively on its F1 comeback as the late start to the new V6 turbo-hybrid era that began a year earlier proved more costly than expected.

A dismal three-year stint with McLaren was ended after the 2017 season but Honda had a reprieve when Red Bull opted to shift its junior team Toro Rosso to Honda engines.

That was in anticipation of a potential move for the senior team to leave its Renault partnership and become Honda’s de facto works team in McLaren’s place.

Honda had a rejuventated 2018 season with Toro Rosso, eclipsing its best results with McLaren and convincing Red Bull to commit for 2019.

Red Bull and Max Verstappen then made Honda a race winner again, as Honda powered the Dutchman to his best-ever season in F1. An extension was signed to cover the 2021 season but negotiations were set to continue over Honda’s participation in F1’s new era of technical rules in 2022.

Cutting costs became a major priority for Honda, which had invested serious resource in its F1 programme with limited returns, and its prospects appeared to be boosted by an engine regulation freeze that will result in specification being frozen next year for several seasons.

However, that has not been enough to convince the board in Tokyo to continue in F1 – partly because the Red Bull partnership’s second season has not lived up to expectations.

HONDA TARGETS 2021

Red Bull Racing’s current engine supplier Honda have made a shocking decision to leave Formula 1 after the 2021 season to chase new horizons.

However, Honda intends to end another F1 journey on a high and they already have a goal for the upcoming season — to take the championship.

“Of course, we are developing our new power unit for 2021, not only for performance but also reliability and then we know our position is still behind the Mercedes, and then the other competitors don’t sleep during the off-season. “

“So we have a very short off-season this year, but everyone involved in Formula 1 makes maximum effort to win races, also the championship, so it’s not… easy to tell you we will win. On the other hand, we would be delighted to win more races and then try to be a challenger for the championship in 2021. So, we keep working very hard on our PU for next year”, said Honda’s technical director Toyoharu Tanabe.

Red Bull has had great performance in both 2019 and 2020 and will have a strong line-up in Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. More than that, Honda has made significant progress throughout the hybrid era. This definitely makes Red Bull a title contender in 2021.