AlphaTauri drivers Pierre Gasly and Daniil Kvyat say they are saddened and surprised by the news Honda will leave F1 at the end of next season.
Gasly has used Honda power in almost every F1 race he has started and delivered some important results for the Japanese manufacturer. His second place in the 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix was, at the time, their best result since returning to Formula 1.Last month the AlphaTauri driver took an unexpected victory for Honda at Monza, making them the first engine manufacturer to win races with two different teams in the V6 hybrid turbo era. Nonetheless Honda announced last Friday they will leave at the end of the 2021 F1 season.
“I have to admit I’m sad that Honda is leaving Formula 1 after the experiences we shared together over the past four years,” said Gasly. “The people at Honda have played an important role in my career and I have always loved working with them.
“But we will still be together until the end of next year and I hope we can try and fight for more wins together before then, and that Honda will be in a position to fight for the championship title.”
Gasly’s team mate Daniil Kvyat said he was also disappointed to learn their engine supplier plans to leave the sport.
“I was surprised to hear the news that Honda will leave F1 at the end of next year,” he said. “It is sad on a human level as I enjoy working with their engineers, and disappointing from a racing point of view because they have worked so hard to give us the best possible power unit and we have seen it deliver some excellent results so far.
“The Honda guys at the track are really committed and I’m sure they will continue to push while they are still in the sport.”
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Patrick (@paeschli)
6th October 2020, 11:38
Surely that should be fourth?
erikje
6th October 2020, 14:50
yep.. 4th..
And
GeeMac (@geemac)
6th October 2020, 11:58
Not sure why Kvyat is saddened, the way I see it their decision throws him a career lifeline. Why would Alpha Tauri stick Matsushita in the car now to keep Honda sweet if they are leaving the sport at the end of 2021? They may as well stick with the slightly erratic but quick on his day driver they know rather than go for Honda’s slightly erratic but quick on his day protégé.
Fisico
6th October 2020, 13:38
Tsunoda, not Matsushita.
For all intents and purpose Tsunoda is still the next in line the Red Bull Young driver academy, Honda leaving is a setback in his support but he might still make it on talen/skill alone, we’ll see.
GeeMac (@geemac)
7th October 2020, 5:14
Sorry, you are 100% correct. Not sure why I said Matsushita…
Jere (@jerejj)
7th October 2020, 8:21
@geemac @Fisico Honda isn’t going to leave until the end of next season, so zero impact on next season, hence, I still reckon that Tsunoda is going to be at AT next season should he become eligible for a super license.
Jose Lopes da Silva
6th October 2020, 12:02
So sad, Daniil. So sad.
Racingdave
6th October 2020, 19:06
It could be some5hing great for the sport.
It keeps swirling* around that a Mercedes might leave or be bought out, then only Renault and a Ferrari framing as manufacturers and then a Renault might question why they are there. Only leaving Ferrari who will always be there.
Suddenly we will have customer engines – Cosworth might reappear, macachrome and Judd – Renault go back to making engines only – could this make things better? Closer?
anon
6th October 2020, 20:55
Racingdave, I presume you mean Mecachrome, but in that scenario it would be a somewhat odd move for them.
What is often overlooked is that most of the components in the Renault engine aren’t actually produced by Renault – Mecachrome produces most of the components and builds most of Renault’s engines, not Renault Sport itself. What you are effectively proposing is a scenario where Mecachrome would be building engines to compete against one of their major customers – which doesn’t really make sense for Mecachrome, and it doesn’t really make sense for Renault either.
As for the other privateer manufacturers – how many of them would actually have the resources to produce an F1 spec engine these days? Cosworth relied on being supported by Ford for most of its time, either being contracted by Ford to produce F1 engines or being directly owned by Ford – they’ve said previously they don’t have the resources to produce F1 engines, and most of their engine projects depend entirely on external manufacturers underwriting those engine projects.
Unless you either had a sizeable chunk of the grid all paying a fairly hefty fee to Cosworth to pay for development, or you had a manufacturer paying Cosworth to develop an engine, it’s questionable if Cosworth really could undertake such a project. Cosworth’s finances are fairly fragile – they’d been making several years of losses after leaving F1, and they’ve had to cut back their operations quite heavily since then. They were only just about returning to profitability last year, so it’s not certain that they’ll even still be around in a few years time.
As for Judd, or Engine Development Ltd as they are called these days, I don’t think that’s realistic given quite how small they are and how little they produce these days. They have a tiny workforce – the company only seems to have about 20 people in total these days – and its turnover is so small that it has a small company exemption for its accounts.
Could they realistically find the resources to produce an F1 spec engine these days? I don’t think they’re competing in any major motorsport series, or even in any of the more minor ones – they basically seem to have shrunk back so far these days that their main business seems to be providing engines for hillclimbing and the Boss GP racing series.
The problem is, it might sound great until you hit the problem of who is going to pay for those engines – because most of those companies are now too small to be able to self-fund development, and the teams are going to be unwilling to pay upfront fees given the lack of certainty that they’d see anything for those payments and because paying large sums of money upfront is going to cause havoc with their finances too.
Racing Dave
7th October 2020, 11:17
Thank you for that in depth look at engine suppliers and spelling 😀
So I’m a bit saddened reading that then because it will only take Renault and Merc to leave ( it’s definitely on The cards Merc will leave with all rumours that persist) and only Ferrari will be making engines.
Could Ilmore become an engine manufacturer without a team? They are owned by Merc and branded AMG and merc are rebranding their f1car to feature AMG More prominently. Could Renault be doing the same and handing back manufacture to MecaChrome? But as you say could leave all together.
Could also Redbull realistically make their own engines with hondas help?
Jere (@jerejj)
7th October 2020, 8:22
@Racingdave Renault would more likely leave altogether than return to solely being a PU-supplier.
Rott
7th October 2020, 14:58
Don’t worry fellaws. Horner has a plan. He will use his big mouth and trash talk to power the two build-only-chassis teams to the front of the pecking order.