What engine does Red Bull F1 use?

Since 2019, Red Bull has been using engines from Japanese manufacturer Honda in F1, after the former’s successful relationship with Renault came to an acrimonious end.

Red Bull’s sister team Toro Rosso (now Alpha Tauri) ran the engines for the 2018 season to allow the former to evaluate the engine’s performance before switching to Honda the following year.

With his triumph at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Max Verstappen became the first F1 driver to win the world championship with Honda engines in nearly three decades, since Ayrton Senna and McLaren's triumph in 1991.

With the conclusion of the 2021 season, however, Honda’s time at the top flight of motorsports has also come to an end. Amid the financial difficulties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Japanese manufacturer decided to leave the sport just seven years after their return with McLaren in 2015.

Honda’s decision left Red Bull and their sister team Alpha Tauri shopping for an engine supplier from 2022 onwards. For obvious reasons, Mercedes engines were out of the question, which left Red Bull to choose engines from the remaining two engine suppliers in F1 – Renault and Ferrari.

As an engine manufacturer, Renault dominated F1 in the first half of 2010s. However, their inability to produce a capable engine to challenge Mercedes and Ferrari in the turbo-hybrid era fractured their relationship with Red Bull.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has previously said that a lack of a competent engine has been a major factor in his team’s inability to challenge for the world championships in recent years. Many believe that Red Bull had a superior chassis compared to the Mercedes one in 2014 when the latter dominated the sport.

Furthermore, in line with their desire to be a proper “works” team, Red Bull also decided against becoming a Ferrari “customer team”. A works team can produce more efficient designs due to greater integration and co-operation between people working on the engine and the chassis – a luxury not available to a customer team.

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Red Bull’s takeover of Honda F1 engines

Assessing all the available options for 2022, Red Bull ultimately decided to build their engines starting next year, instead of becoming a customer team. Earlier this year, Red Bull announced that they had come to an agreement with Honda to take over the latter’s F1 engine division starting in 2022.

Shortly after the announcement, in an interview with F1.com, Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner said:

“We are very pleased that our ambitious and exciting Red Bull Powertrains project will be strongly supported by Honda, technically and operationally, in 2022 and this will help ensure that Red Bull’s transition to the status of chassis and power unit manufacturer is seamless.”

As part of the agreement, Honda will transfer all engine-related intellectual property to Red Bull. Additionally, the latter is also absorbing existing Honda personnel to work on its future engines, as well as hiring external talent.

Red Bull wants to build its engines for the 2026 season and onwards when new engine regulations are expected to come into force. Meanwhile, F1 engine development has been frozen starting this year (after extensive lobbying by Red Bull) to rein in costs.

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