2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[edu2703]

I understood what he meant and he is right in saying that the last 3 championships won by Verstappen are not only thanks to Honda. Let's be clear: from 2021 to 2022 the Power unit was developed by Redbull powertrain together with Honda, so from 2022 onwards it was a modified Honda engine. At Sakura they knew the modifications and so they simply helped in the logistics and production part, they have the intellectual property of that engine (in fact it bore the Honda name), but the development it wasn't done only in Sakura.

Honda's withdrawal announcement was made on October 2, 2020.

Basically from 2018 to 2020 pure Honda engine, from the beginning of the 2021 to 2025 Honda modified by Redbull Powertrain.

I'm unaware of any "extremely significant" contribution from Red Bull to Honda PU that was a "game changer" to the point of crediting almost all of the PU's success to Red Bull, as the OP claims.

But one thing is certain: Honda PU was already showing competitiveness, realiability and good performance before Red Bull became directly involved in its development.

[Cbckly917]

I don't know where this narrative was born from, maybe people are still latched onto the IP transfer announcement that got walked back, but the IP transfer *never occurred* between RBPT and Honda. Some Honda employees were poached by Red Bull, and now they're working alongside other people poached from every other F1 PU maker on this year's RBPT "Ford" unit. But the 2021-2025 Red Bulls were powered by Honda and Honda only, RBPT branding be damned. RBPT did trackside maintenance for the engines, and they assembled the Honda-designed ESS at in Milton Keynes. That's the full extent of any RBPT contributions to the hardware in the back of any Red Bull until this year, to the point that any failed engine remained sealed when on the way back to HRC Sakura.

[McG]

Classic case of not bothering to read up on who was responsible for the quick improvement of "Honda". Red Bull’s improvement followed the hiring of Mercedes power unit engineer Ben Hodgkinson to lead Red Bull Powertrains, which fundamentally changed how the so called Honda engine was developed, integrated, and operated. While the core architecture remained Honda’s on paper, Red Bull gained championship winning mechanical expertise in reliability optimisation, packaging, and extracting performance from the power unit in ways Honda had not achieved before in that chassis. In Formula One, operational control and engineering execution define real world performance, so although the design originated with Honda, the engine’s behaviour and results were shaped largely by Red Bull’s own power unit program. I'll never fully understand why people don't just fact check before posting.

The way you put it, it sounds like Red Bull did some kind of reverse engineering, building their own PU using only the Honda PU as a base, and only then did it become a competitive power unite capable of winning races and championships.

The reality: Honda PU has 17 wins and a drivers' title before Red Bull Powertrains started working on the PU in 2022, and even before Ben Hodgkinson started working for the team, as he was on gardening leave in 2021.

And no, Red Bull didn't make any significant modifications to the PU to gain much performance. Even because power unit development was frozen in 2022, and Honda anticipated the pre-freeze version in 2021. The PU that Red Bull used weren't even manufactured in Milton Keynes. They were always manufactured at the HRC plant in Sakura. When you think they were Red Bull power units with a Honda sticker, the fact is that it was quite the opposite. They were Honda power units with just the RBPT sticker.

The PU was already competitive even at Toro Rosso in 2018, when they finished P4 in Bahrain in the first year Honda PU was in the team. I don't know what source you've been looking at, that places almost all the responsibility for the success of Honda PU on Red Bull, when the Honda PU was already showing competitiveness years before Red Bull even had an power unit department.

There was great cooperation between Honda and Red Bull which ensured maximum integration of the power unit with the car that allowed the team's championships, but to give all the credit on PU side to Red Bull is extremely ignorant. Several of the changes and improvements to the PU were conceived and developed by Honda engineers in Sakura, not by Ben Hodgkinson's team in Milton Keynes.

Again, I would like sources that support at least half of what you wrote in your comment, because as far as I've researched, your comment is so wrong in several points that it sounds like pure ignorance. But judging by your profile picture, I think I know where your hatred for Honda comes from.

Get the sources yourself then

I really shouldn't engage in such delusion but
reliably upgrades practically always bring performance. Plus all the other operational stuff I mentioned. Hodgkinson was an amazing hire that went a bit under the radar. What makes you think I hate Honda because of my avatar? I have 2 Honda road cars and I've had maybe 30 or 40 over the years and they are great. I am a bit of a fan when it comes to Honda road cars, Super GT and BTCC so it's a shame to see them fail in F1 again. There's a difference between blind faith and facts.

[McG]

'Comment of the Day' on racefans.net on 21st Feb...

"Honda is such a mess and again it’s amazing that they have had this much time and still producing a dross engine. I think we have to give Red Bull a lot more credit than we realised for getting that power unit to work for them through the last regulations cycle and reliably."

[zoroastar]

I don't really understand how they can have severe battery issues. The battery capacity is supposed to be similar to last year and Honda have been making F1 batteries for years. But the battery has to deliver alot more juice to the MGU-K.
Could it be related to the solid state rumour around christmas? Maybe they have made a solid state battery that was in the car now but it's not working properly yet. Or maybe they were working on a solid state battery, and could not get it to work yet, so had to rush to make a traditional lithium battery pack in time for Barcelona and Bahrain, and so that one has issues since it was rushed?

honda themselves said that it wasnt going to be fully solid state in a press release a couple of weeks ago, in which they were touting their great battery tech.

[Bence]

I wonder when people are going to understand that no RBPT engineer has ever touched nor developed a Honda engine. The sealed units came from Japan. Only Honda engineers were allowed to touch them, and they went back to Sakura in the same way as a sealed package.

There was only one significant RBPT development however, which was the printing of their label. Period.

[zoroastar]

That's such a lie, and you should know it. This narrative was made by a few journalists and no one who actually worked with Alonso at the time says that. You can believe what you want but in this case you are wrong

No point in arguing. Some of you guys dreamed up a massively rosy view of him, despite all the crap he put out in interviews and stuff he did, like blackmailing the team principal because he didn't get special treatment, and wasting his own championship with a penalty worthy dirty move in qualifying. It's not likely that you'll open your eyes now...

You have been spamming this thread the last two days and telling anyone who does not agree with your biased take how wrong they are. Maybe you should take your own advice?

you took the words right out of my mouth. then i remembered that "ignore" is a feature in here, and that problem was solved.

[McG]

I wonder when people are going to understand that no RBPT engineer has ever touched nor developed a Honda engine. The sealed units came from Japan. Only Honda engineers were allowed to touch them, and they went back to Sakura in the same way as a sealed package.

There was only one significant RBPT development however, which was the printing of their label. Period.

This is not true. RBPT had a massive influence on everything that was the Honda PU. In fact it's almost wrong to call it a Honda PU. Props to Red Bull for turning that heep of junk around even though I despise Red Bull. It's all about the people and Red Bull simply had the right people.

[zoroastar]

Folks you have a gearbox that falls apart in a few km. Most of the recovery energy loss is in there. Max recovery is basically mass of the car and its speed. Braking recovery goes through gearbox, shaft and MGU-K that slow down the rear wheels directly.

If you can’t recover it’s not the ICE, at most the ICE doesn’t make you go as fast, but the ICE could be off and it wouldn’t change the energy recovery at all.

Yeah this Force india gearbox - erm - I mean Aston Martin gearbox is actually their first one and its total crap. It actually hurt the running more than the engine. In these 50% electric regs, the engine and the gearbox need to work in perfect harmony.

yeah, i dont buy it. if this was all caused by a faulty gearbox, why would honda be releasing statements about the problems we saw with their engines. why arent aston martin honda coming out and saying "this is just a gearbox, so were gonna get it fixed real fast. any number of reasons that "the gearbox theory" doesnt add up. when was the last time any team ever lost 3 weeks of testing because of a badly designed gearbox? trust me, i want you to be right, but it dont add up. the gearbox is probably the least of their problems right now.

[TyreSlip]

Folks you have a gearbox that falls apart in a few km. Most of the recovery energy loss is in there. Max recovery is basically mass of the car and its speed. Braking recovery goes through gearbox, shaft and MGU-K that slow down the rear wheels directly.

If you can’t recover it’s not the ICE, at most the ICE doesn’t make you go as fast, but the ICE could be off and it wouldn’t change the energy recovery at all.

Yeah this Force india gearbox - erm - I mean Aston Martin gearbox is actually their first one and its total crap. It actually hurt the running more than the engine. In these 50% electric regs, the engine and the gearbox need to work in perfect harmony.

yeah, i dont buy it. if this was all caused by a faulty gearbox, why would honda be releasing statements about the problems we saw with their engines. why arent aston martin honda coming out and saying "this is just a gearbox, so were gonna get it fixed real fast. any number of reasons that "the gearbox theory" doesnt add up. when was the last time any team ever lost 3 weeks of testing because of a badly designed gearbox? trust me, i want you to be right, but it dont add up. the gearbox is probably the least of their problems right now.

The gearbox could be an issue, but we do not and will not know until the significant vibrations from the ICE are addressed first. That is masking everything at the moment.

[CHT]

I wonder when people are going to understand that no RBPT engineer has ever touched nor developed a Honda engine. The sealed units came from Japan. Only Honda engineers were allowed to touch them, and they went back to Sakura in the same way as a sealed package.

There was only one significant RBPT development however, which was the printing of their label. Period.

There are 2 parts to F1 PU, the ICE and the Battery. As I know, Honda handles the ICE, while RBPT has taken over the electric side of the business since 2023 via company RBPT 2026 Ltd.

[dialtone]

Folks you have a gearbox that falls apart in a few km. Most of the recovery energy loss is in there. Max recovery is basically mass of the car and its speed. Braking recovery goes through gearbox, shaft and MGU-K that slow down the rear wheels directly.

If you can’t recover it’s not the ICE, at most the ICE doesn’t make you go as fast, but the ICE could be off and it wouldn’t change the energy recovery at all.

Yeah this Force india gearbox - erm - I mean Aston Martin gearbox is actually their first one and its total crap. It actually hurt the running more than the engine. In these 50% electric regs, the engine and the gearbox need to work in perfect harmony.

yeah, i dont buy it. if this was all caused by a faulty gearbox, why would honda be releasing statements about the problems we saw with their engines. why arent aston martin honda coming out and saying "this is just a gearbox, so were gonna get it fixed real fast. any number of reasons that "the gearbox theory" doesnt add up. when was the last time any team ever lost 3 weeks of testing because of a badly designed gearbox? trust me, i want you to be right, but it dont add up. the gearbox is probably the least of their problems right now.

I don’t see it as exclusive at all.

The engine has problems and the gearbox clearly as problems. We’ve not seen the engine go up in smoke, but we sure as hell heard the gearbox crunch up.

And why AMR wouldn’t do it is the same as why MCL had the “best chassis” in 2017. Hubris.

[AR3-GP]

What was distinctive was that there were two tiers of orange square objects sitting in front of the internal combustion engine (ICE). This orange box is the battery (Energy Store = ES) and the control electronics (CE), which is the electronic device that controls the power unit. Until last year, these two were laid out in front and back and were one tier.

Why did it become a second tier? According to the head of development, Tetsushi Tsunoda, the large project leader (LPL), revealed that there was a request from the team.

"As we proceeded with the development of the new car, the team requested that it be compact and shorten (the overall length) as much as possible, so we decided to make it a two-stage car."

https://www.as-web.jp/f1/1286322?all

There was a "request" last year to change the energy store. Who joined Aston Martin last year? Adrian Newey. Fast forward to 2026, Honda having energy store problems.

This is Adrian Newey's signature. Push everything to the last minute, push packaging to the brink, push the PU manufacturer to the limit, and create reliability problems. He is a brilliant engineer, but he is also known for causing great strife to technical partners.

I don't agree with people trying to dump this solely on Honda and imo the relationship is already broken. Newey is uncompromising and has little patience when Honda needed the patience that was shown by Franz Tost in 2018. It is Newey's words that leaked from the F1 commission and further damaged Honda's reputation. The media and fans have been relentless and 1-sided in blaming Honda but it is because they don't understand how Formula 1 works.

[Bence]

I wonder when people are going to understand that no RBPT engineer has ever touched nor developed a Honda engine. The sealed units came from Japan. Only Honda engineers were allowed to touch them, and they went back to Sakura in the same way as a sealed package.

There was only one significant RBPT development however, which was the printing of their label. Period.

There are 2 parts to F1 PU, the ICE and the Battery. As I know, Honda handles the ICE, while RBPT has taken over the electric side of the business since 2023 via company RBPT 2026 Ltd.

RBPT was just a service bay for the Honda-designed ERS.

[Bence]

I wonder when people are going to understand that no RBPT engineer has ever touched nor developed a Honda engine. The sealed units came from Japan. Only Honda engineers were allowed to touch them, and they went back to Sakura in the same way as a sealed package.

There was only one significant RBPT development however, which was the printing of their label. Period.

This is not true. RBPT had a massive influence on everything that was the Honda PU. In fact it's almost wrong to call it a Honda PU. Props to Red Bull for turning that heep of junk around even though I despise Red Bull. It's all about the people and Red Bull simply had the right people.

If you had the slightest idea of the magnitude of the utter BS you are spreading...