After Honda made its much-awaited comeback to the sport, McLaren found itself with a flawed power unit concept in the turbo-hybrid era. Despite that setback, when the Japanese Automobile giants partnered up with Red Bull, they made a championship-winning combination.
After a disastrous spell with the Woking-based team, Red Bull’s alliance with Honda was laughed at. “I think it almost made the whole paddock laugh. McLaren staff came to me and they said we were completely crazy to be working with Honda,” Franz Tost said as quoted by GPFans.com.
From 2015 to 2017, Honda partnered with McLaren. However, due to an underpowered and unreliable design concept, the duo could not even register a single podium finish or win.
Tost, however, knew the potential of the collaboration between Red Bull and Honda. After being ridiculed, the Austrian manager only had one thing to tell his rivals. “Guys, just wait, in five years we’ll have it. about this’. But it didn’t take five years. It became clear much sooner that we had made the right decision,” explained the outgoing AlphaTauri boss.
After Honda alliance, Red Bull look forward to 2026 collaboration with Ford
The early days of the Red Bull-Honda collaboration proved that Tost was right. He knew that the performance was on par to be fighting for a Formula 1 world championship soon. And in 2021, that prediction became a reality.
However, despite Max Verstappen still winning championships, the relationship with Honda has taken a complicated turn. The Japanese outfit has decided to part ways with Red Bull from 2026 onwards. Even today, the power-unit is run under the name of RBPT (Red Bull Powertrains) even though the team still uses Honda IP.
For 2026 and onwards, Red Bull has announced a partnership with Ford. The iconic American automobile company has decided to make a comeback to the sport after their success in the early 1990s.
Talking about their collaboration, Christian Horner even commented, “I think as our relationship develops from a technology perspective, they’re bringing more and more to the table, which is really quite interesting.”
