I think Ecclestone will force Maclaren to allow HONDA to supply RBR engines .... HONDA want it to happen, RBR want it to happen and so does Bernie ... IMO it will happen.

 

The rule was that Honda were to supply a second team in 2016.

I can understand why McLaren would be miffed, they have taken a painful 12 months and then lets say Honda have a half decent engine they get trumped by RBR....

Bit of a pi55er

 

The rule was that Honda were to supply a second team in 2016.

I can understand why McLaren would be miffed, they have taken a painful 12 months and then lets say Honda have a half decent engine they get trumped by RBR....

Bit of a pi55er
[/quote]
I think that the agreement was that they would supply another team in 2016 but that McLaren would have a veto. Also not sure that they have to supply the latest engine.

 

The agreement with Bernie was that they could only be exclusive for one year, and we know now the agreement with McLaren gave them a veto, so I suppose it might be a case of which contract wins. If they were to supply Toro Rosso, which presumably Ron would be okay with, then the conflict goes away.

Renault might still be better than Honda next year, and why would Renault be allowed to only supply one team if Honda are not?

Interesting times. Still it wouldn't be F1 without some kind of off track drama.

 

http://www.speedweek.com/formel1/new...Undenkbar.html


RBR keeps on saying that they will be worse off with Honda than with Renault,
and that Merc and Ferrari are too scared to provide them an engine.

And reiterates that continuing with Renault in 2016 absolutely will not happen.
Unless Bernie can threaten or bribe someone, I don't think this is looking particularly good for Red Bull.

And I'm not even sure how I feel about it.
How they killed their engine deal without checking out the options first is beyond me.
They obviously must have thought they would be bailed out.

 

They have been very foolish in the way they have conducted this. Openly criticizing their supplier without a backup option wasn't too clever and almost seemed like they were too big for their own boots.

Whilst I would be sad to see this go badly, I hope they find an option, but not Honda - that's a really bad idea for all concerned. What I suspect is that Honda will pull one out the bag next year, there's no way as McLaren you would want to risk losing that advantage. But I do wonder what commercial pressures are at play. Honda will have spent some serious money correcting a bag of crap with almost no return. Having another buyer will help there.

 

From what I understood Mateschitz shook hands with Niki Lauda on a supply deal. Only for Lauda/Mercedes to then renege on the 'gentlemans' agreement.
From the handshake RB treated Renault badly in the belief they had a supply of Merc engines, only for it to blow up in their faces.

They will end up back with Renault engines for next year but debadged.

 

I wonder what the real situation with Mercedes was. Lauda keeps saying they'd offered to supply RBR, with some caveats, but then didn't hear back from RBR.

 

Though Lauda says the handshake didn't mean they had a deal, it was just a handshake.

What I read was that Mercedes weren't prepared to do any kind of deal as long as RB had a contract with Renault, which is why Red Bull cancelled their contract with Renault. But somehow they didn't secure Mercedes and then Mercedes agreed to supply Manor and so had as many customers as they wanted.

Though with all the key people leaving Manor you have to wonder if they'll still exist next year.

 

Interesting morning for me.
Just had a 5 minute or so chin wag with Johnny Herbert

That's made my day