AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost has explained the role he played in pushing for Red Bull’s junior outfit to be a powertrain development ground to benefit the senior outfit – though it came at the expense of reliability.
His team began using Honda power units that year. The Japanese manufacturer had endured three torrid seasons supplying McLaren from 2015 to ‘17, and seen a deal to supply Sauber fall through.
Tost’s team, known at the time as Toro Rosso, switched from Renault to Honda engines in 2018. It worked with the Japanese manufacturer to develop the package Red Bull began using the following year. It proved successful and Red Bull driver Max Verstappen went on to win the 2021 title with Honda power.
Before agreeing the deal for Toro Rosso to use Honda engines in 2018, Tost said he “simply could not believe that Honda is not able to build a power unit which can win in F1.”
The manufacturer had returned to F1 in 2015. “From 2014 onwards, I always kept in contact with Honda,” Tost explained in a video published by Honda. “Of course they had a difficult time together with McLaren, but I was 100% convinced that with a good co-operation you can win with Honda.
“When we decided 2017 to change to Honda, I know that many people in the paddock didn’t believe this decision. They said personally to me: ‘How can you decide to work together with this company? This will bring your team into big difficulties.’ And I just said to them ‘please, ask me in five years, then we will see what’s going on’. And we had from 2017 onwards fantastic co-operation with Honda.
“We had a very open business relationship and on the technical side there was a real, really cooperative collaboration between Honda and between Toro Rosso in those days. Many times engineers came here to Japan, to Sakura, the other way round as well. Honda engineers came to Faenza. And this good cooperation, and this good communication between both parties ended in winning the championship and winning races.”
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Tost promised Honda “in those days that – not with Toro Rosso but with Red Bull Racing – they will win races and maybe also the championship.” Red Bull clinched their second consecutive constructors’ title last weekend and Verstappen is poised to win the drivers’ title for the third year in a row in the sprint race ahead of next week’s Qatar Grand Prix.
Tost said that success “is what I expected from Honda.” His team played a crucial role in Red Bull’s progress to getting its hands on a competitive engine after year of frustration with Renault.
“Reliability was one story, but the performance another one,” said Tost. “And Honda during the winter months made a big step forward already.
“But we knew if they want to win the races and the world championship with Red Bull Racing we have to develop the power unit all over the year. And this was decisive. That meant we had a reasonably good basis from the reliability side, but of course they had to improve the performance.”
Tost therefore urged Yasuaki Asaki, Honda’s head of power unit development, to accelerate their development programme throughout 2018, even if it meant replacing engines more frequently and incurred grid penalties.
“I remember it was Asaki-san, I said to him ‘please bring to every race a new specification, a new upgrade, doesn’t matter if we have to start from the back’. And this he did.
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“We nearly got to every race a new upgrade, which meant we had to start from the back, but this was calculated. And this development speed during 2018 made it possible to have such a good power unit then provided to the teams, to Red Bull Racing and to Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2019 and 2020.”
Red Bull duly switched to Honda engines the following year, and delivered their first win in their ninth start together.
Toro Rosso’s work with Honda “was the basis, because it was very clear that they have to improve the performance and the engineers in Sakura did really a very, very good job,” said Tost. “Not so much at the beginning of 2018, but for sure at the end of 2018, and especially then 2019 when they recognised how correct and important our decision was to join Honda.”
Across 2018 to 2020 (totalling 59 races) there were 17 instances of Honda-powered drivers at Red Bull and Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri being sent to the back of the grid for using additional power unit elements, with nine of those being in 2018 when Toro Rosso was alone in using Honda engines.
“Red Bull observed the development steps in detail,” said Tost. “Therefore it was important to develop the engine and to come up with a better performance from race to race.
“This was at the end the decision differentiator for Red Bull Racing to go with Honda. Because they saw, yes, Honda develops the power unit in the best possible way, and this is a partner which we can trust and which we can work together.”
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