NL_Fer wrote: ↑13 May 2023, 10:14
McG wrote: ↑11 May 2023, 04:12
dren wrote: ↑10 May 2023, 19:56
I hope that pans out to be true. The team is headed in a good direction.
It's a terrible fit. It's almost like if McLaren took Ferrari engines. The Mercedes is every bit as good as the Honda if not better still. All the engines are close to equal. It's the Mercedes powered cars that are dogs. Have a look at the great Honda engine in the Alpha Tauri doing absolutely nothing special. No one is in the Alpha Tauri thread singing about how great the Honda engine is.
Aston have good connections with Mercedes in the road car industry and it just works. Wouldn't be surprised if this is all BS.
It has already been suggested that the team could drop the Aston Martin name, because they are both different entities, who share some owners. Looking at Mr.Stroll’s plans to win races and championships, a good funded works deal could bring the team a step closer. If Honda plays it right, maybe we see the Silverstone team under a different name in 2026.
Aston Martin and Honda on the same care wasn’t that long ago, btw:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... asly_1.jpg
That was a crossover sponsorship due to the Valkyrie road car designed by Newey. That's fair enough if they drop the Aston name, but why would Stroll, a stake owner of Aston Martin drop such a historic name?
Starting with least likely I think the options are...
1. Aston Martin powered by Honda which sounds ridiculous to me. Stranger things have happened though.
2. Use the Honda engine but brand it as Aston which is ridiculous.
3. Uses Honda and rebrands (again) while keeping his stake in Aston which would be quite ridiculous to remove the Aston name from the best advertising platform.
4. Sells his stake in Aston, rebrands (again), takes the unproven (again) Honda and Honda money if it's a works deal. Stroll Honda with the stroll part going racing for free because Honda will pay for everything as the F1 budget is so low now. As a businessman this will make the most sense to Stroll. But business has risks and Honda have history of pulling out and are only an empty shell of glory followers at the moment.
5. Keep Mercedes, keep his stake in Aston, get another top driver. Which has the caveat of keeping up this current form. If form falls away then see number 4.
PS The Race aren't any different from any other clickbait low traffic sites.They are taking a wild guess. Autosport 3 weeks ago said it's unlikely and summer filler
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/could ... /10458263/
Finally, everyone knows that Red Bull is a joke and Max Verstappen is overrated.