They may have only worked together for a year, but Honda believes the relationship built with Max Verstappen is similar to that with a “young Ayrton Senna”.
The Dutchman is known for being vocal with his opinions and was very outspoken about his unhappiness with the performance of Renault during their final year with Red Bull.
So when they changed engine supplier for 2019, Verstappen was particularly enthusiastic about their potential and that was certainly felt by everyone at the Japanese manufacturer.
“As Honda, we see him as a very important factor with Honda’s project,” the F1 chief Masashi Yamamoto told Motorsport.
“He’s young, but his driving is really impressive. It looks like seeing a young Senna and with his relationship with Honda.
“Max maybe pays respect to Honda. He feels Honda is familiar and then probably the badge he showed on the podium in Austria proved that he was very happy as well.
“This gives us an emotion that we want to provide a good engine for him, but , of course, all four drivers are very important for us.”
Senna and Honda became synonymous during the Brazilian’s career as he won 32 races and three world titles in cars powered by the company.
And Yamamoto sees the same desire that made Senna so popular in the 22-year-old.
“The passion we showed towards winning made the relationship stronger with him,” he explained.
“He also has been to the F1 R&D centre and our mass production site. There’s many, many people [working at the factories] and he has actually seen it.
“He went through a tunnel of people getting high fives, like one kilometre long!
“That kind of thing maybe gave him a stronger impression about Honda and a stronger commitment to Honda.”
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The performance of the Japanese engine is seen as crucial to whether Verstappen and Red Bull can challenge for the world title in 2020.
Max though is more confident now than he has been at any point with the Milton Keynes-based outfit.
“I think so,” he said on if the team was ready to take on Mercedes. “I think we are in the right direction. There’s no question about that.
“Now, it’s just about how much development we can push through. I more or less know, I just hope it’s going to be enough.
“There are no real changes in the regulations anyway, so you can just build on what you have now. And now in the second year working with Honda, I think that should help.
“We massively improved the performance of the engine. I think we know where we have to improve on, we’ve already improved on the car.”