2026 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team

[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.

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

there are 2 RBPT companies.

RBPT Limited, est in 2021 (which is servicing Honda engine)
https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

RBPT 2026 Limited est in 2022 (which is now responsible for developing and manufacturing 2026 engine)
https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

[zoroastar]

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.

yeah i saw a pic someone posted a few pages back that said that IP changed to RBPT in 2022, but i was pretty certain that honda still owns that. its told from all different sides though, so i was wondering. i guess if it was in line to change and it got walked back, like you said, it couldve confused some people. a lot of good its doing now though.

[zoroastar]

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.

yeah im not saying the gearbox isnt a problem, it just isnt making a perfectly running honda PU look like a very bad PU. i wish it was that simple.

[zoroastar]

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.

whatever dude. whole different company, all different people. at the end of the day, if the honda in the back of the mclaren was worth a crap, mclaren wouldve known they had a bad chassis about 3 years sooner. theres plenty of blame to go around everywhere 10 years ago. but why is everyone taking a side? some honda fans cant believe in a world where their favorite brand can make a mistake. it could be that the gearbox is making the problem worse. in rectifying the situation. it could be a lot of things we dont know about yet. but every team has a fairly reliable and decently powered car, except aston honda. including teams that have never even made an engine before. everyone creates working gearboxes, every year for decades. honda has been saying they were having some problems for months. nothing is 100% certain, but theres a bit of common since to be had here.

[CHT]

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.

yeah i saw a pic someone posted a few pages back that said that IP changed to RBPT in 2022, but i was pretty certain that honda still owns that. its told from all different sides though, so i was wondering. i guess if it was in line to change and it got walked back, like you said, it couldve confused some people. a lot of good its doing now though.

Although Honda mentioned RBPT has right to use Honda IP, but RBPT always maintain that no Honda IP was transferred


At the start of 2023, Red Bull Powertrains 2026 announced a key strategic partnership with the Ford Motor
Company. This partnership, along with the continued support from the wider Red Bull GmbH Group, enables the
continued investment in both the facilities and talent required to implement an operation capable of delivering a best
in class power unit, to be used in the Formula One World Championship from 2026 onward.

Development of Red Bull's own power unit has continued in 2024, with performance milestones achieved, which
will power Oracle Red Bull Racing and Visa Cash App Racing Bulls in the Formula One World Championship from
2026 onwards. Commissioning of our manufacturing, build and test equipment has also been completed. Support via
the Ford Motor Company strategic partnership has made a valued contribution to the power unit development
programme.

Whilst Red Bull Powertrains Limited, an affiliate of Red Bull Powertrains 2026 Limited, is party to agreements with
Honda Racing Corporation for the supply of current generation power units, no IP has transferred from Honda
Racing Corporation to the Company.

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... download=0

[dialtone]

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.

yeah im not saying the gearbox isnt a problem, it just isnt making a perfectly running honda PU look like a very bad PU. i wish it was that simple.

Vibrations is the same stuff they were saying about the MCL. This engine has run in the dyno, they aren’t gonna ship an engine that breaks a gearbox due to vibrations. This is also what was going on in 2014 with RBR, that the Renault engine had vibrations.

This isn’t Honda’s first engine and they had damn near the best engine of the past regulation. While the ICE is surely different, it’s not so different and neither is the MGUK or the battery. In fact this is specifically a simpler engine.

At minimum this is an integration issue between the chassis, the engine, the gearbox and the rest of the stuff in there.

AMR literally put together the car the day before they were meant to be in Spain. Williams skipped the test to go to the virtual test track where you get the chance to validate integration issues.

Why did they wait so much to put the car together? Before the Spain test the news was that Newey wanted to make last minute changes and forced everyone to work through it. And that Newey only joined in April and it was a difficult introduction due to shortened time.

Somehow this last minute rush turned into Honda can’t make an engine… Wild stuff. Treat your strategic partners like this, see how it works out.

[zoroastar]

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.

yeah im not saying the gearbox isnt a problem, it just isnt making a perfectly running honda PU look like a very bad PU. i wish it was that simple.

Vibrations is the same stuff they were saying about the MCL. This engine has run in the dyno, they aren’t gonna ship an engine that breaks a gearbox due to vibrations. This is also what was going on in 2014 with RBR, that the Renault engine had vibrations.

This isn’t Honda’s first engine and they had damn near the best engine of the past regulation. While the ICE is surely different, it’s not so different and neither is the MGUK or the battery. In fact this is specifically a simpler engine.

At minimum this is an integration issue between the chassis, the engine, the gearbox and the rest of the stuff in there.

AMR literally put together the car the day before they were meant to be in Spain. Williams skipped the test to go to the virtual test track where you get the chance to validate integration issues.

Why did they wait so much to put the car together? Before the Spain test the news was that Newey wanted to make last minute changes and forced everyone to work through it. And that Newey only joined in April and it was a difficult introduction due to shortened time.

Somehow this last minute rush turned into Honda can’t make an engine… Wild stuff. Treat your strategic partners like this, see how it works out.

ok got it. just like always, its a conspiracy against honda. theres no way they could ever mess up. thanks

[zoroastar]

Shiga Sports in japan are reporting that Honda has communicated to Aston Martin that they expect to have a solution to the main technical problems by the chinese grand prix at the latest. claiming inside sources. i know nothing about Shiga Sports

[Ground Effect]

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...

Oh, the thankless job of a "mere" engine supplier in a works deal! A team wins, and it's their chassis. Now, the new story is, when they win with your engine, it's because they "fixed" it. The Red Bull taking over or buying Honda IP was an early discussion, it never materialised. But "Ben Hodgkinson came and turned their lives around!" Hodgkinson was only released by Mercedes in May 2022 though. Say what you want to say about Honda, but credit, where credit is due. Below from Motorsports.com, with some quotes from Wantanabe..

One left-field option was to acquire Honda's IP and build the current power unit until the end of the current rules cycle, but that proved too complicated to pull off for both sides. "Having explored that it became more and more complex, because that process is not just about building engines, it is way more than that with the supply chain and so on," Horner said.


A more realistic path was a paid deal between Honda and Red Bull until the end of 2025. Honda would provide technical support, and all engines for both Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls would still come from Japan. "We announced stopping our Formula 1 activities, but after discussions with Red Bull, they wanted us to continue the activities. That’s why we became a kind of technical support since then. In fact, we still operate everything on the power unit side", Honda Racing Corporation chief Watanabe told Motorsport.com.

Horner added: "We are a customer to Honda. We pay for engines through a separate entity of Red Bull powertrains. It has been a great relationship, and they continue to provide an excellent service that we pay for, to provide engines for the four cars."

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/red- ... /10695064/

[collindsilva]

Something doesn't add up, Honda has been supplying the engines to RB, same team is working on the new engines, The architecture of the engine is the same, so what went wrong...
Seems Honda had some clever trick in their engine (TGI or some stuff) which became redundant on the new regulations ....putting them on back foot...

[venkyhere]

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.

thank you.
Although we don't know whether this is directly responsible for the issues they face, atleast this is 'data' to the discussion. Fact is, none of us 'know' what the problem is; yet many people want to pass their final verdict on "who is to blame", in this thread.

[Brahmal]

Did Honda make transmissions for Red Bull? I'm wondering if Aston made their own because they wanted to, or because they had to.

[IliasM]

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...

People just don't understand what "owing the IP" means...so they just carry on their delusional path. Simple fact...the PU that powered Max's 4 championships and all Red Bull's wins is the property of Honda and no one else 's!

[WardenOfTheNorth]

I can't help but shake a very specific thought seeing all this.

Newey being the Team Principle may not actually be a good thing.

Let me explain:

Either he is not able to give his full attention to the car development due to the other demands placed on a TP...

OR

He actually needs someone to reign in his ideas a little bit and does not have that now.

The more I see of this car, the more it reminds me of the MP4/18 where Newey designed a car so extreme that it was never able to fulfill its theoretical potential.

I hope I'm wrong.

[GhostF1]

Did Honda make transmissions for Red Bull? I'm wondering if Aston made their own because they wanted to, or because they had to.

No Red Bull have always made their own gearboxes, as have McLaren. So Honda only supplied the PU.