Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri cars have had Honda engines since 2018. Team leader Franz Tost explained how this transition worked.
Franz Tost: “I have been in contact with Honda since 2014. They had a hard time with McLaren, but I was 100% sure that over time it would be possible to win with these engines.
When we announced our move to Honda in 2017, many in the paddock thought the decision was a mistake. But I said to them, “Ask me in five years and we’ll see.”
In 2017 we immediately had an excellent interaction with Honda. We were open to each other, our engineers came to the Honda base in Sakura more than once and Honda engineers came to Faenza.
Motorists have two success factors: reliability and power. Honda has already taken a big step forward in the winter, but we knew that if they wanted to win races and titles with Red Bull Racing, they had to improve the power unit throughout the season. This played a decisive role.
I remember Yasuaki Asaki (Head of Honda Racing and Research and Development) saying: “Please bring a new engine specification, something new for each round, and it doesn’t matter if it means we have to start last after penalties. ”. So he did. In almost every race we got new things and started to fall behind, but that’s how it was calculated. And such a high speed of development made it possible to finally obtain a good power plant.
The collaboration with us was a decisive factor for Red Bull Racing when signing a contract with Honda. They saw the progress of drivers and realized that Honda could be trusted and work together.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
