Christian Horner Reveals the Moment When He Decided to Go With Honda as the Latter Took a Reputational Hit With McLaren

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner recently opened up on how he decided to form a partnership with Honda, who took a major reputational hit following their disappointing collaboration with McLaren. The 50-year-old stated why he felt it was “sensible” for Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri) to first partner with Honda before Red Bull followed suit.

While speaking to James from PitDebrief, Christian Horner revealed, “[After McLaren and Sauber turned down a partnership with Honda] Strategically for us, it seemed sensible to place Honda with Toro Rosso [present AlphaTauri]. And then it gave Red Bull Racing the ability to evaluate versus our current partner [Renault back then]. And there was a decision point in June of 2018 where we had a crossroads where we had to make a decision.”

Red Bull eventually decided to partner with Honda after they struggled immensely with the reliability of the Renault engines. While the decision seems brilliant now, it was bold to switch sides back then. This is simply because Honda had a bad name in the industry after they failed to help McLaren achieve success.

McLaren’s partnership with the Japanese heavyweight began in 2015 and it was a season to forget for the British team. They finished ninth in the Constructors’ Championship with just 27 points, ahead of 10th-placed Manor who operated on a small budget.

McLaren struggled so much that even champion drivers like Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso struggled to make it out of Q1 as they were over 2.5 seconds off the pace in qualifying. Along with this, Honda’s engine also had huge reliability issues which turned things into a nightmare for McLaren.

However, barely any such concerns were seen when Honda partnered with Red Bull in the last few years. Although Honda helped Red Bull achieve tremendous success, the Milton Keynes outfit will no longer partner with them after the 2025 campaign.

How did Honda’s uncertainty push Red Bull away?

Since Honda decided to withdraw from F1 at the end of the 2021 F1 season, Red Bull had to look for alternatives. Since the Milton Keynes outfit did not want to be a customer of a rival team, they decided to invest in their own powertrains division.

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As for Honda, their success with Red Bull made them rethink their decision to quit the sport. However, it was too late by then. Red Bull had already decided to partner with American giants Ford from the 2026 season onwards. As a result, Honda decided to make a deal with Aston Martin to start supplying engines to them from the 2026 F1 season.