The Honda engine manufacturer has aligned itself with the objectives of its partner Red Bull Racing in Formula 1: to win the first world champion title together.
Honda returned to F1 in 2015 with McLaren, renewing an association as historic as it was disappointing. The Japanese then turned to Red Bull, who sent Toro Rosso to the front first in 2018, before the Honda V6 arrived last year on the RB15 and this year on the RB16.
Honda F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe wants to be confident.
“We hope to fight for the championship this year and win as many victories as possible,” he admits today.
“We had to stop the development of our engine because of the coronavirus, we did not improve it as much as we wanted for the Spec B which will arrive this weekend.”
“It’s the same engine concept as that of the Barcelona tests, of course, but we were able to work a bit in certain areas, as much related to reliability as to performance.”
F1 does not yet know how many races it will have to race this year, which makes engine planning very difficult, Tanabe said.
“Reliability and performance are very important in F1. Even if the season is shortened, we have to find the right compromise. But when we know exactly how many races we will have, we will be able to put the cursor a little more on performance rather than on the reliability. In the meantime, we cannot predict anything. “
To go to the world title, Red Bull counts on Max Verstappen, like Honda for that matter.
“Max is special. He does more than we expected. He is very precise and generally very calm, but he also acts sometimes with great passion. He is a very nice boy. The pilot is one of the car’s best sensors. We cannot see the driver’s comments in the data. He may feel other things. For example, we have no idea what the car looks like in ‘dirty’ air generated by other cars. Max tells us exactly what we need to progress. “
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