Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Boullier explains McLaren desire for exclusivity

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Eric Boullier has explained why McLaren does not want Honda supplying a rival team after Red Bull approached it for engines.

Red Bull is currently without a power unit deal for 2016 after moving to terminate its deal with Renault a year early and being turned down by Mercedes and Ferrari. With Red Bull having approached Honda around the Russian Grand Prix weekend, Boullier says entering in to a partnership with the Japanese manufacturer was a move designed to allow McLaren to challenge for championships in the future.

“Whatever you write, everyone has got an opinion,” Boullier said. “The truth is, we wanted to work with Honda, Honda wanted to work with us as an official partnership because having an OEM official partner is the only way we believe to be world champion. If you are a customer of an engine manufacturer you can’t be world champion.

“So this is a privilege obviously we found, we brought in to Formula One and we don't want to share. That’s it. But I don’t want to comment any more.”

Bernie Ecclestone said in Austin that Ron Dennis was blocking Red Bull’s request, with McLaren having the power to veto who Honda supplies.

“The honest answer is that, at the moment, it would appear that Honda are happy to give them an engine, and Mr Dennis thinks they shouldn’t,” Ecclestone said. “Although Honda have an agreement with the FIA and myself that we allowed them into F1 supplying engines to one team in the first year, two teams the second and three teams the third, and they somehow got involved and made a commitment to Ron that he had a veto on any engine supply and he doesn’t want Red Bull. I think he believes they may be competitors.”

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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.