Had Honda not been so hasty in quitting F1 in the first place, or been prompter in approving its return, then Red Bull would have had no need to do its own thing on the engine front and commit hundreds of millions of pounds to its new Powertrains division.
It was no wonder that Max Verstappen’s first response to the news of Honda staying in F1 was to suggest it was a bit of a ‘shame’ the way the situation played out.
“I think from our side, of course, it's a bit unfortunate how all of that turned out because a few years ago, they say we're going to stop, so then Red Bull sets up its own engine division, and then at one point they say no, we continue,” he said at the Monaco Grand Prix.
"Unfortunately, once you're already in the process of building a whole engine yourself, you can't really work together anymore. It's a bit of a shame, I would say.”
From the perspective of Red Bull’s team management, it was a no-brainer to understand that things would have certainly been an awful lot cheaper if Honda had elected to stay put.
“It was certainly an expensive decision,” smiled Red Bull team boss Christian Horner about the call to go down the Powertrains route.
But F1 is not a sport where success is achieved by doing things on the cheap.
While Red Bull has certainly had to dig deep into its pockets to follow Mercedes, Ferrari and Alpine in producing both cars and engines, there are clear benefits from it that remain priceless.
Chief among them, which also proved to be a factor in why its talks with Porsche over a 2026 engine deal collapsed at the 11th hour, was in Red Bull being fully in control of the future.
Source: Autosport