Honda: Next step is to win with Red Bull

With Red Bull joining the fold next season, Honda will spend the second half of this year “quite focused” on the development of next year’s power unit.

Earlier this month Red Bull confirmed that they would swap from Renault to Honda for next year’s championship.

And while this has raised some eyebrows, especially given Honda’s back-to-back engine issues in Canada and France, the Japanese manufacturer are doing all they can to prepare for next season.

“Regarding our race research and development institute from Honda, obviously we are going to work on minute details for the Spec 3,” Honda motorsport chief Masashi Yamamoto told the official F1 website.

“But simultaneously, we’re going to be very concentrated on the specs for next year.

“This year’s spec is mainly all decided for this year, so the last half of this year now will be quite focused on the development of the specs for next year.

“But all the others will be focused on the engine for next year, too.”

Honda returned to Formula 1 in 2015 in what proved to be the start of a troubled three years with McLaren, ending in that partnership being dissolved at the end of last year.

They took on Toro Rosso for this year’s championship with Red Bull now joining them next season.

And while it remains to be seen how that works for both parties, Honda are dreaming of race wins with Red Bull.

“The first three years with McLaren after the return for Honda were very, very important, because it was three years of learning, learning what we had lost from the gap that there was between the last time and returning to Formula 1,” he said.

“We’re very appreciative of those three years.

“Then when we joined this year with Toro Rosso, we really from the beginning realised it was such a beautiful and very good collaboration between us, and we were ready for our next step.

“Our next step is to win races and to win races, we decided that getting together with Red Bull is the right choice.”