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After careful contemplation, Red Bull Racing have announced that they choose to part ways with Renault and switch to Honda as their engine supplier for 2019-2020.
Red Bull has been with Renault for over a decade and has won all their championships with the French constructors. Red Bull’s sister team, Scuderia Toro Rosso, had switched over to Honda for 2018 and the energy drinks’ team were closely monitoring the progress shown by both engine manufacturers over the season.
After weeks of evaluation, the Milton Keynes based outfit has chosen the Japanese manufacturers instead of the works team. Red Bull Racing has signed a two year deal with Honda to see out the current engine regulations. The deal would come into effect from 2019 and would see both the Honda affiliated teams race with identical specification power units. The energy drinks team have chosen to stick with the name Aston Martin Red Bull Racing to race under.
Explaining their decision, Team Principal Christian Horner said, “We have been impressed by Honda’s commitment to F1, by the rapid steps they have made in recent times with our sister team Scuderia Toro Rosso, and by the scope of their ambition, which matches our own.
“This multi-year agreement with Honda signals the start of an exciting new phase in Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s efforts to compete not just for Grand Prix wins but for what is always our goal – championship titles.”
Honda and Renault will both be supplying two teams going forward. Honda would be partnered with Toro Rosso and Red Bull, whereas Renault would be supplying its works team as well as McLaren.
Renault would not be happy with the decision, seeing as how they were doing everything possible to keep the energy drinks team on-board. However, despite Honda’s weak returns ever since they came back to F1 in 2015, they have shown potential with Toro Rosso and have everything to gain from this partnership. Red Bull have increasingly grown tired of not being able to compete with Ferrari and Mercedes throughout the season and have probably decided that a team that focuses solely on them would be more beneficial and help them fight for championships.
It would be interesting to see now how smoothly Red bull transition to Honda after being tied with Renault for the past 12 years and how Renault would turn out as a developer without Red Bull Racing’s inputs.
