Red Bull takes over part of Honda staff, but also looks to the competition
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Red Bull is working hard to be able to make their own engines for Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri from 2022 onwards. The question now is what name to put on the engine, and what people the team can recruit to make the engine project a success.
Takeover of Honda
Red Bull announced on Monday that they are buying the engine project from Honda. It had long been expected that Red Bull would do this, as it did not want to continue as a customer team from 2022 onwards. It was, however, dependent on the other teams, as they still had to vote in favour of the plan to freeze engine development from 2022 onwards.
Now that that has been achieved, Red Bull is looking at the next step in the process. ''We will take over some people from Honda, and furthermore, it is common in this business to lure people away from other teams,'' Helmut Marko told Sport1.de.
Partner for Red Bull
There is also a lot of talk about different partners for Red Bull in producing the engines. Now that Red Bull is going to develop the engine itself, perhaps it can use the expertise of a Mario Illien, or perhaps an Alfa Romeo or Audi would like to rebrand the engine. Red Bull doesn't rule out any of those options, but also thinks it can do it itself.
''Even without a partner we can build an engine all by ourselves. Then it will be the Red Bull-Red Bull. Our extra costs have been kept in check. Of course we are investing a lot now, but in the end I don't think we will spend much more than as a customer with another manufacturer'', the Austrian concludes.