Red Bull team boss Christian Horner believes the new tie-up with Honda is the final “ingredient” needed to win again in Formula 1.
The Milton Keynes-based outfit has been keen (putting it mildly) to talk up their new engine partnership, having put five years of hybrid misery with Renault behind them.
In pre-season testing, the new combination was reliable but just how competitive Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly will be is still unknown.
“I think the most important thing is to work as a team,” Horner said on what will be key to success at a demo in Tokyo on Saturday.
“We’ve achieved more than 50 Grand Prix victories and eight world championships working as one team, [but] the ingredient we’ve had missing the last five years has been the power unit.
“We believe in this new relationship with Honda that that missing ingredient is now available to us. I think working collectively as a team, as things have started, then the opportunities are massive for the future.”
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Honda’s own expectations are rising too with the team now fully committing their motorsport boss Masashi Yamamoto to the Red Bull F1 project.
“Yamamoto’s new role underlines just how important this project is to Honda, especially in its first year back supplying two teams on the grid,” the company said in a statement.
“Taking over the role of general manager of motorsport department will be Hiroshi Shimizu, currently president of Honda in Mexico.”
