In the latest episode of the F1 Beyond the Grid podcast, Tom Clarkson has interviewed Christian Horner, the Red Bull F1 boss who gave some details about the saga of how it went about coming to the decision of creating its own engine division, Red Bull Powertrains. In September 2020, Honda announced it was leaving F1 which left Red Bull without a power unit supplier for both its teams - Red Bull and AlphaTauri at the end of the 2021 season. As per regulations at the time, it was contingent on the supplier with the least customers to come in to help Red Bull at fair and reasonable terms.
This meant, Red Bull would've been stuck with Renault, its former supplier with whom it had an acrimonious relationship over the years, even though it won 4 world titles with it.
Christian Horner has been in charge of the team since Red Bull took it over from Jaguar
Photo Credit: AFP
"The most natural thing was to have a discussion with the existing suppliers. Mercedes was a very short conversation. Toto wasn't particularly keen on that one. In fact, Renault, their aspirations as a team didn't include supplying a team like Red Bull," revealed Horner.
The relationship between Renault and Red Bull had grown sour ever since it had acquired the Lotus team. Red Bull used to have a "works" vertically integrated relationship with it which wasn't the case anymore.
It hadn't also helped that Renault lagged Mercedes in the turbo-hybrid era which was one of the major causes behind Red Bull's fall from the heights of 2010-2013 as aerodynamically it remained one of the best cars during even its lean period.
This situation also made Mercedes vary because it didn't want to supply Adrian Newey the Red Bull chassis with its best-in-class engine which would've made things tough for its own team on the race track. Renault was perhaps thinking on the same lines but it would've been forced to do so by F1.
Mattia Binotto had often indicated that Ferrari was open to the idea
Photo Credit: AFP
Interestingly, Horner revealed Ferrari wasn't, which was something unfathomable at the time when Honda announced its exit. It was believed that Ferrari wouldn't have been open to be outperformed by a car that had its own engine, much like Mercedes and Renault.
"Probably the most willing was Ferrari and we had some exploratory discussions. But to be a customer, so as to accept all the integration, particularly, with the new regulations coming, will be a massively hard pill to swallow," revealed Horner who cited issues with integration especially with the new regulations coming as the deterrent.
It perhaps also didn't help that Ferrari in 2020 had the last competitive engine which had been throttled by technical directives that came because of Red Bull. If Red Bull were to mount a challenge to Mercedes in the long term or even Ferrari for that matter, it would need an engine designed to specific needs of his chassis.
"That's when we started to explore the possibility of how do we take on this challenge in a Red Bull manner and see if we can put a deal together with Honda for the foreseeable future," he said.
"The freeze (engine development freeze) was fundamental to that as we wouldn't have the capacity to develop that engine. You know to take that step and it is a bold step, to take control of our destiny as an engine supplier and bring the whole lot under one roof in Milton Keynes would make us the only team other than Ferrari to have the whole lot within one facility," he added.
Red Bull has recruited Ben Hodgkinson from Mercedes to run the new Red Bull Powertrains division
Horner also revealed these plans were attractive to everyone including F1 technical director Ross Brawn and CEO Stefano Domenicali as Red Bull didn't have a road car division. Often the regulations were dictated by the corporate needs of the various manufacturers as F1 tech would often spill over in their road car business.
Horner revealed for the first time Red Bull was one power unit supplier that didn't make road cars, much like Cosworth operated in the late 90s and early 2000s.
