Helmut Marko has revealed that Honda will now continue to supply Red Bull Racing and Scuderia AlphaTauri engines until 2025 rather than until the end of 2022.
Honda withdrew from Formula 1 at the end of 2021 on an official basis but agreed to continue to supply the two Red Bull teams engines for 2022, but this agreement has now seemingly been extended until the end of the current regulations.
Red Bull are currently assembling their own engine department – Red Bull Powertrains – in order to develop their own engines, with the Milton Keynes-based team taking over the intellectual property of the Honda engines in order for them to continue running them this year.
Marko says the change in the plan with regards to engines will help them when it comes to developing the 2026 power units, where Red Bull will be in complete control of the development.
“We have now also found a completely different solution to the one originally envisaged,” Marko is quoted as saying to Austrian publication Autorevue.at. “The engines will be manufactured in Japan until 2025, we will not touch them at all.
“That means that the rights and all these things will remain with the Japanese, which is important for 2026 because it makes us newcomers.
“In the course of our ever greater successes, a certain rethinking has taken place among the Japanese. And also that they could of course use the battery knowledge for their electrification phase.
“It was initially planned that they would only make our motors for 2022. Now it has been decided that this will continue until 2025, which is of course a huge advantage for us. This means we only have to make fine adjustments and calibrations.”
