Helmut Marko believes that Red Bull’s new engine partner Honda will out-develop the rest of the engine manufacturers in F1 next season.
The Japanese manufacturer returned to the sport in 2015 with McLaren. However, during their three years together, Honda provided slow and consistently unreliable engines that plagued McLaren throughout the relationship.
McLaren dropped Honda for Renault, and Toro Rosso took on the Honda engines, with more success than McLaren had.
This convinced Red Bull to swap Renault for Honda, in an attempt to return to the front on a more regular basis.
Marko was speaking to Austrian broadcaster Servus TV, and said: “With Toro Rosso, everything is working perfectly.
“Next year Honda will make a much bigger effort. They have a development centre in Sakura which nobody can keep up with.
“The Japanese have a different culture and a different way of working. You learn that over time.”
Marko also said how Red Bull’s approach to Honda will be different to the one McLaren had.
Red Bull will seemingly let Honda do what they want and work around them, whereas McLaren were demanding Honda fit in with their needs.
“Our approach with Honda is different than McLaren’s. They were telling them how they wanted the engine to be built, we just say, ‘build the fastest engine possible for us, then we will try to fit it into the chassis’.
“We don’t have any demands, we discuss everything together.”
So, will Red Bull find success with Honda, or will it be another McLaren-style disaster story?
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