Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHonda

Honda keen to supply second team

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Honda motorsport boss Yashusa Arai has told F1i he wants the Japanese engine manufacturer to supply a second team with power units next year.

Returning to the sport at the start of this season, Honda has entered in to a works partnership with McLaren for 2015, with no other customers. With Haas set to enter in 2016, the FIA recently opened up a tender to potentially allow another new team to join F1 either next year or in 2017.

While Arai insists the current situation is sufficient for the power unit’s development due to McLaren’s size, he says it would be vindication of Honda’s work if another team approaches him later in the year.

“Unfortunately I don’t have any offers right now,” Arai said. “Maybe after the summer break, I hope someone calls me and says ‘please give me your good engine’! Right now we don’t have it, but I hope we get it.

“We learn a lot with McLaren. It’s very successful, and for the development we don’t need [another team] because it’s a top team so we learn enough. But for the whole of Formula One it’s very important to increase teams to make it more attractive and more competitive. I think that’s the right way to go.”

Asked if Honda would want to supply engines to another team if a new entry came to him, Arai replied: “Yes.

“I would feel a very good feeling if some new team or newcomer says ‘Please, we want to use your engine’. I would be very happy. Do we have the power to operate everything? I don’t know. Maybe we need more time to operate more than one team. Of course, McLaren-Honda is a works team, so how we would separate that and work with another team I have no idea.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.