The Honda name has been an absolute staple of Formula 1. We could go all the way back to the golden years of McLaren in the late 1980s, but this story sticks to the modern era specifically the last decade, to stay relevant and avoid the kind of scope creep that turns an article into a Wikipedia rabbit hole.
The McLaren-Honda Reunion: A Match Made... Somewhere
The year was 2015, and the new F1 hybrid power unit formula had just kicked off. Honda, seduced by the prospect of cutting-edge hybrid technology, decided this was the perfect moment to make their grand return. McLaren, meanwhile, was looking to graduate from being an engine customer to full works status. On paper? A match made in heaven. In reality? Water trying to mix with oil and spoiler: that emulsion doesn’t exist.
On one side, you had a brand-new power unit being developed from scratch by a manufacturer still finding its feet in the hybrid era. On the other, a chassis team near peak development, fully exploiting their experience with the Mercedes V8 — which had led to their now-infamous “size zero” concept: a bodywork so narrow it was practically a polite suggestion of a car (?). Honda, shoehorning their power unit into this packaging nightmare, responded the only way they knew how: by finding creative new ways to break down. Year one was, being generous, a write-off.
Year 2 (2016) brought genuine improvement a jump from 9th to 6th in the constructors’ standings. Not exactly the stuff of legend for a brand like McLaren, but a meaningful step forward. Then came 2017: the final year of this unholy union. Honda arrived with a brand-new engine concept featuring a split-turbo arrangement and enough changes to fill a press release. It should have been the silver bullet. Instead, reliability nosedived, McLaren fell back to 9th, and the two sides agreed loudly and publicly to go their separate ways.
The Red Bull Chapter: Much Better
In 2018, the Honda power unit found a new home in the back of a Toro Rosso, serving as a test ahead of the main Red Bull team making the switch in 2019. The Renault partnership had hit the rocks — noisily — and Red Bull were ready for something different. Honda obliged. The partnership hit its true stride from 2021 onwards, with Max Verstappen delivering the kind of performances for highlight reels and giving rival engineers sleepless nights.
Wait... Honda Did What Now?
In late 2020, Honda dropped a bombshell: they were leaving F1 at the end of 2021 to redirect resources toward carbon neutrality and electrification. The timing was, to put it diplomatically, awkward — Red Bull had just started winning again.
What followed was a masterclass in Red Bull politics. Unable to source a competitive customer engine, they lobbied the FIA for a development freeze across all power units, giving them time to set up their own engine operation. Honda agreed to transfer their IP and hand over their Milton Keynes facility. Red Bull Powertrains Limited was born.
The original plan was for RBPT to take over manufacturing and maintenance in a swift, clean handover. As tends to happen with swift, clean handovers, it was anything but. Honda and Red Bull quickly concluded that a full transfer was impractical. The solution? Honda would quietly keep manufacturing, maintaining, and supporting the engines on-site, four years after announcing they had thrown in the towel. Magnificent.
To complicate matters further, the 2022 regulations mandated a switch to E10 fuel, a blend with 10% ethanol content, which required a substantial redesign. The engine, now christened the RBPTH001, was developed, produced, and maintained entirely by Honda, despite the name on the tin suggesting otherwise. New crankshaft geometry, revised cylinder block, a specialised coating borrowed from Honda’s motorcycle division, and a reworked injection and exhaust system. The result? A higher thermal efficiency than the 2021 engine, comfortably exceeding 50%, one of the most efficient combustion engines ever put in a racing car.
For most of the 2022 season, the Honda logo was conspicuously absent from the cars. Then, at the Japanese Grand Prix, Honda announced the “re-strengthening” of their partnership and agreed to support the programme through 2025. The logo reappeared. Everyone pretended the last 18 months had been perfectly normal. The rest, as they say, is history: back-to-back constructors’ titles in 2022 and 2023, four consecutive drivers’ titles for Verstappen, and a dominant run only seriously challenged by a resurgent McLaren, who ultimately snatched the 2024 constructors’ crown, toward the end.
The Second U-Turn (Honda At It Again)
With Red Bull pivoting to an in-house project backed by Ford from 2026, Honda needed a new partner. Enter Aston Martin, with the announcement made in May 2023, ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix, to maximum fanfare. The key catalyst, Honda explained with great corporate sincerity, was the 2026 regulatory framework: the elevated role of electric power (now 50% of total output), and the mandatory use of 100% sustainable fuels. Honda preferred to frame this not as a return, but as a “realignment.” Charming.
The 2026 power unit, the RA626H is genuinely allnew, built around a 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 with a dramatically uprated MGU-K producing around 470 bhp of electrical output, while the internal combustion element was scaled back. The MGU-H, a source of immense complexity in previous generations, was abolished entirely by the new rules. Honda developed the unit at their HRC facility in Sakura, Japan, and unveiled it at a formal Tokyo launch event in January 2026.
2026: Are We Back in 2015?
If any of this is starting to sound familiar, that is because it should. During pre-season testing in Barcelona and Bahrain, Honda confirmed that vibrations in the power unit were damaging the battery system. Reliability was so poor that Honda burned through the majority of their spare parts just getting through the Bahrain test, leaving them genuinely unprepared for the Australian Grand Prix. There was talk of skipping the round entirely.
The finger-pointing duly followed. Adrian Newey revealed that Aston Martin had only become aware of significant staffing problems in November 2025 — many of the engineers from the original programme had not returned when the project restarted. Analysts quickly identified the culprit: those 18 months Honda spent officially “out” of Formula 1 had allowed experienced staff to scatter to the wind, and rebuilding institutional knowledge proved far harder than anticipated.
The Moral of the Story
Honda’s relationship with modern Formula 1 is, to put it generously, a study in contradictions. They abandon ship just as things get hard. They come back when the regulations suit them. They announce partnerships with great ceremony and then spend the next year quietly unpicking the practical implications. And yet, sandwiched between the chaos, they build genuinely extraordinary engines.
The lesson, if there is one, is simple: don’t quit. Those 18 months of institutional drift in 2023-2024 are still being paid for in 2026. The back-and-forth may never truly end with Honda and Formula 1, but here’s hoping they have finally learned that you cannot just pause a decade’s worth of engineering expertise and expect to hit play again when it suits you, at least not without consequences.
Stick to your guns, Honda. The sport is better when you do.
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