🗣 'Mercedes have been great partners for the team. They're in it to win. And clearly, we're here to win as well. So there is some incompatibility in those two missions.' Analysing the 'incompatibility' that led to Aston Martin's Honda F1 deal:
On the face of it, Stroll appears to have the perfect set-up with his partnership with, a team whose parent also owns a significant stake in the Aston Martin Lagonda road car company. A PU, gearbox and rear suspension package sourced from a winning outfit is a handy starting point, allowing the team to focus on everything else.
The desire to be in charge of your own destiny in terms of power unit supply has been long been espoused by teams. In late 2014, McLaren boss Ron Dennis gave an intriguing insight into his thinking at that time. McLaren was using Mercedes hybrid engines for a single interim season before the move to Honda, and Dennis had watched with frustration as the works team dominated.
“Even though you have the same brand of engine that does not mean you have the ability to optimise the engine. So you’ve got to start by putting yourself in a position where you have the best engine available. And yet McLaren and Honda failed to do that during their disastrous liaison in 2015-2017, with poor communications exacerbating the weaknesses in their respective technical offerings.When it fell apart and the Japanese manufacturer was dumped by the Woking outfit, Red Bull was only too pleased to step in.
“I think the first and obvious example was, we currently share a windtunnel with them. And yet, we're having to spend a huge amount of money to build our own windtunnel, which is only four or five miles from the quite adequate one that we use. “In my view, it is very, very difficult to consistently win championships without a full works relationship, which is why we've made this decision, and why we're delighted to have a fantastic partner like Honda.”
“We have a great partnership currently. And we have great components and systems provided to us. But this is about the growing up of this team. You set out to win in F1, that means beating existing partners. And that means in order to do that, we've got to be independent.“We're building great, great facilities, and we're progressively pulling away from our dependence upon Mercedes-Benz and that's no reflection on them.
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