Honda is considering a return to F1 from 2026, but a final decision is set for mid-June, GrandPrix.com reports. This date is seen as the final deadline for Sakura’s engineering department to acquire the manpower needed to develop a brand new power unit that is competitive and reliable from the start.
Honda officially withdraws from F1 at the end of 2021. The company hopes to stop producing combustion engines within the next decade, so most of its designers and other engineers have moved on to developing future electric engines. Following a decision taken by the board of directors, a group of engineers from the F1 program remains to work on Power’s project for 2026. Toyoharu Tanabe, the former technical director of Honda F1, remains head of that small group of engineers, representing Honda in all meetings of the F1 technical group on defining power unit regulations for 2026, and Japan. manufacturers are clearly opening the door. Masamitsu Motohashi, who was appointed to replace Tanabe at the end of 2021, completed his final race in Melbourne as head of Honda’s trackside operations and returned to Japan to bring that experience to the F1 group, joining the technical group in Sakura. added a very important new element. Honda Racing is pushing hard with its board of directors to gain permission to move forward with the group’s full budget towards an official return in 2026, but questions remain over who Honda F1’s potential partners would be. ing. Sources close to Honda say McLaren and Aston Martin are the two most likely candidates. But a deal with McLaren could be complicated from a political point of view. Zak Brown was in charge of the team when he decided to end his contract with Honda F1 at the end of 2017. The collaboration was almost hopeless from the start, but this probably left a scar that made future collaborations impossible any time soon. Aston Martin meanwhile sees a brighter future for the British manufacturer as the huge investment made by Lawrence Stroll and his partners is paying off and the team’s new factory is expected to be fully operational by the end of the year. I see Considering that the Aston Martin and Honda alliance does not compete in the same segment of the automobile market, there will be no problems in terms of commercial and marketing, and there is a possibility that it will develop into a technical exchange in the production sector. It will be beneficial for both parties. But the first step before anything else happens will depend on a board meeting in June deciding on the direction of Honda’s future F1 plans.