Red Bull and Honda will continue to work together on a number of levels following the Japanese company’s withdrawal from Formula 1 this year.
In 2022 Honda will support the building and operation of its engines for Red Bull, which has bought the intellectual property rights to continue using the power units.
This arrangement will end in 2023.
That is when employees of Honda’s UK base will transfer to Red Bull’s new engine operation.
And the two companies will co-operate on their young driver programmes.
This work has seen Japanese Yuki Tsunoda make his F1 debut for Red Bull’s Alpha Tauri team this year and is aimed at “further promoting the growth of motorsport in Japan, with the ultimate goal of getting more Japanese drivers into top-line global motorsport”.
Honda decided to pull out of F1 at the end of this season so it could concentrate on zero-emissions vehicles for road use. Its F1 engineering expertise will transfer to other projects looking at zero-carbon road transport.
Koji Watanabe, chief officer for brand and communications at Honda, said: “In this way, Honda can still contribute to the motor racing world.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said: “Red Bull’s collaboration with Honda has been enormously successful and while our relationship in Formula 1 is changing, neither of us wish for that to be the end of the story.”
Horner said the arrangement would “help ensure that Red Bull’s transition to the status of chassis and power-unit manufacturer is seamless”.
