“We are going to support as much as possible”– Honda reveals Red Bull’s 2022 engine plans and how they will assist them despite the exit.
Honda announced its shocking departure from F1 in 2020 and scheduled 2022 as their exit date. While Red Bull didn’t go for another manufacturer, it sought an engine freeze that will help them to continue with the current Honda engine till 2025.
Despite Honda’s exit at the end of this year, the Japanese manufacturers have claimed that they will be assisting Red Bull in every possible way while revealing the Milton-Keynes-teams’ engine plans.
“So basically, it’s based on this year’s [engine], because it’s quite new compared to last year’s,” Masashi Yamamoto explained. “It’s different and we will make it to fit the new regulations for next year. So basically it’s the same.”
“It’s going to be the last homologation, so we are doing as much as possible in terms of performance updates as well. We are going to support as much as possible the technical side in order for both teams [Red Bull and AlphaTauri] to be competitive.”
“On the marketing side it will be minimum support [from Honda]. We are almost equal with Mercedes in terms of reliability and performance.”
New business vision enforcing F1 exit
Yamamoto answered when asked about Honda’s possible re-entry in F1 by saying that their new business plans have enforced the exit, and they will soon be happening a new leadership who may decide to ply their trade again in F1.
“We are finishing the project after this year and we are going to focus on carbon neutral and also electric,” said Yamamoto when asked whether Honda could return to F1 in the future.
“About the future, we have a new CEO from this April, so he may be considering something, but at the moment, we can’t really say anything. The main reason is that we are using our best engineers from the company in F1 to catch up [to] Mercedes.
“So we want to use them in electrification and also [the] carbon-neutral project.”
