“It would be really something big for Honda” – The Japanese carmaker is leaving F1 for the foreseeable future after this season and want to ensure they help Red Bull win the world championship before they do.
Honda is one of the most successful car manufacturers in the sport’s history, having helped iconic teams like Williams and McLaren win six consecutive Constructors’ Championships during the eighties. The drivers who won titles driving Honda cars include stellar names like Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.
But this century hasn’t been too kind to them, with no remarkable achievement to show for. But with Red Bull this season, Honda have a realistic chance of leaving the sport with a bang, something Honda’s F1 managing director Masashi Yamamoto is eager to realise.
“This F1 programme is going better than the last one because in the last one we just won one race. Now we have five consecutive wins and pole positions, those kinds of things.
“Rather than comparing the third era, which is what we call the 2000s, we are comparing against the second era [1983-1992], which is the golden time. That’s our target. We will try to reach that.
“If we had quit after 2017, there’s nothing left really. No legacy at all. But if we can win the championship and we leave after this year, our engineers will get huge confidence in the achievement. They will know how to succeed. It would be really something big for Honda.
“We have a motivation to win the championship regardless of if we leave or stay. But Honda people had another step of motivation when we heard Honda is leaving at the end of 2021, especially from an engineering point of view.
“We are now showing our best, which is coming from all seven years of effort. If we keep continuing and we achieve the target, we think we will show everyone in the world what we can do.”
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