Nelson Piquet (potentially the future father-in-law), Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Max Verstappen: the Dutch driver has entered his name bringing to six the world titles won by the Honda in F1. The poker of riders is of absolute prestige (altogether there are eleven world titles won by Piquet, Prost, Senna and Verstappen) and the affirmation of the Verstappen-Red Bull-Honda trident has allowed the latter to return to the top of the world in F1 30 from the last sharp signed in 1991 with Ayrton Senna, ruler at the wheel of McLaren.
The Woking team was Honda’s ‘testing ground’ in the turbo-hybrid era from 2015 to 2017, a truly three-year period stingy of satisfactions for McLaren and for the Japanese manufacturer, which had to deal with the great difficulties in keeping up with Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault in terms of engine performance. The power units, in fact, proved to be extremely complex and Honda had to chase the competitors for years before starting to reach an acceptable level up to bringing the RA621H – this is the name of the turbo-hybrid engines made in Sakura – to sufficient performance. to allow Max Verstappen and Red Bull to beat Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes.
Honda CEO, Toshihiro Mibe, underlined that the three years in McLaren was fundamental to lay the necessary conditions for winning the world championship: “With the Woking team we respected each other too much, failing to reach the goals we set ourselves. I still remember the discomfort I felt in Bahrain in 2017 when we realized that we were not yet as competitive as we had hoped. The moment I cherish with great affection, however, is the 2017 Spanish Grand Prix, when we entered Q3 for the first time. Fernando Alonso then finished seventh in the race, for the first time we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The three years in McLaren have been fundamental to growth, especially as regards the development of the MGU-H component ”.
It is no coincidence that the MGU-H is the component that will no longer be part of the engines that will be adopted in F1 starting from 2026. To attract new manufacturers, the Circus has decided to simplify the engines by removing a component behind which they are needed. years of studies to achieve adequate performance, precisely those spent by Honda in F1 with a thousand difficulties. Another positive memory for Mibe is the first Red Bull race powered by the Honda power unit: “Coming third in Australia on his Red Bull debut was a great confidence boost. We then had to wait longer than expected before celebrating our first victory, but now we have fulfilled a dream that seemed impossible. For this I want to thank all the men and women who worked tirelessly to achieve a goal of absolute prestige “.
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