Honda and the challenges for yet another return to F1 in 2026

When it was announced last year that Honda would officially return to F1 with Aston Martin, one of the problems the Japanese would face was reassembling its structure. After all, a good part of his staff had moved to Red Bull Powertrains, a company created by the Bulls to be able to take care of the current power units and develop new ones for 2026.

This Wednesday (27th), the racing division Honda Racing Corporation, announced the formal creation of the British subsidiary, HRC UK. This will be responsible for the maintenance and preparation of Honda’s current Power Units, as well as starting work on the partnership with Aston Martin.

For now, the official address is the Japanese automaker’s British headquarters. In the next few weeks, however, a series of signings should begin (including the return of some former members of the Red Bull world). The old base was in Milton Keynes and today Honda uses a Mugen unit, which is located opposite the old facility, now owned by Red Bull Powertrains. If Honda decides to maintain operations there, it will be 20km from Aston Martin’s new headquarters.

It wasn’t just the structure, but a good part of the staff also migrated to the RBPT (around 150 people, according to the Italians from FUnoAnalisiTécnica). This leads to a major replacement that had already been predicted by the Japanese (we talked about it here last year). However, the statement from the Japanese brand clarifies some points…

When there was the Honda/Red Bull agreement to transfer the current PU to the management of bullfighting, it was not explained very well how the roles would be divided. Since there was a relocation of people and facilities, it was thought that Red Bull would take it all over. But for reasons of industrial secrecy, part of the intellectual rights remained with Honda.

With Red Bull’s success, Honda once again put its name more prominently on the Red Bull and Alpha Tauri cars. And the statement clarified that Honda currently carries out the manufacturing and maintenance work on the Power Units, while Red Bull PowerTrains is responsible for the production and operation of the UP batteries. In other words, even with the transfer of Intellectual Rights (as required by law), in Japan the dirty work continues to be carried out by the Sakura laboratory team, including the development of the races.

This could be the big “leap”. Even when there was a British base, the main work was done in Japan, so the loss of staff may not be that critical, although several old-school technicians who had been working in the competition since the 1980s have left. Not to mention, the battery department has been where Honda has made huge gains over the years.

The work will be carried out by the Research and Development team. The first prototypes are already running on the dynamometer, but no results have been released. What is expected is that this time Honda does not waste so much time on pride and allows itself to have external support to be competitive from the start. However, with the new facility being created and a new team to work with… there may be some noise until everything settles down. And it may be too late.