Franz Tost doesn’t say it out loud, but he must feel satisfaction when he comments on perhaps the bravest step of AlphaTauri’s recent Formula 1 career: the switch from Renault to Honda engines before the 2018 season.
“I think at the beginning practically the entire paddock laughed at us,” says Tost. Because Honda had not covered itself with glory in the previous years: the Japanese manufacturer had practically only followed McLaren and had to listen to the ridicule of Fernando Alonso, who publicly denounced the drives as a “GP2 engine”.
Tost also received verbal broadsides: “People from McLaren came to me and said we were crazy to get involved with Honda. I just replied: ‘Now let’s wait and talk about it again in five years.’ But it didn’t take five years. It became clear much quicker that it was the right decision.”
Red Bull knows about it after six months
After six months, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner had seen enough and was convinced that in 2019, in addition to the “B-Team” AlphaTauri (then still Toro Rosso), “A-Team” Red Bull would also be supplied with Honda power .
“Honda contributed resources and ideas, and so it was obvious to us that we would go to Honda,” explains Horner. “We were on the podium right at the debut race and won three races this year. This meant that Honda was once again among the winning teams.”
Four years later, no one is talking about Honda’s weakness in the 2010s anymore. On the contrary: “We have now achieved more Honda victories than McLaren did back then. Max [Verstappen] is the most successful Honda driver. And our partnership is great,” says Horner.
Almost all of AlphaTauri’s major successes came from Honda
He attributes the drive manufacturer from Japan to “a large share in the successes of recent years and especially this year.” But Tost also speaks of a “fantastic collaboration” with Honda, especially since AlphaTauri achieved four of its five podium places with Honda engines – except for Vettel’s victory in Monza in 2008, because Ferrari was the engine partner at the time.
The fact that this new era of Honda success was able to take place at all is also thanks to the negative attitude of the competition, says Horner: “McLaren rejected Honda and Sauber let a deal with Honda fall through.” But Red Bull took a risk and was rewarded with numerous victories and titles: in 2023, the team even achieved a “double victory” in the Formula 1 drivers’ championship for the first time.