“Wake-up call” for Formula One

This weekend, F1 moves to the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve for the Portuguese Grand Prix. Formula 1 used the facility for pre-season testing in 2009, but this Sunday will mark the circuit’s debut as a round of the championship.

The track features several changes of elevation within its 4.653 km length and some extremely challenging corners, ranging from tight hairpins to long, very fast, downhill sweeps. The 66-lap total of 306km should provide plenty of action. After the race, the Algarve circuit will host all F1 team chiefs, Jean Todt, the FIA president and officials from current owners Liberty Media, for discussions regarding the future regulations of F1 engines.

As Red Bull and Alpha Tauri are desperately seeking a new power plant, it is not surprising Red Bull principal Christian Horner is currently the most vocal. The sudden decision by Honda to leave F1 at the end of 2021 leaves the Milton Keynes and Faenza based teams in a very difficult situation. Mercedes is unable to supply, while Ferrari do not have a desirable product at present. That leaves only Renault, or the strong possibility of a Red Bull takeover of the Honda F1 design and technology.

On the Japanese manufacturer’s decision to withdraw from F1, Horner is reported as saying: “I think it’s a real shame for Formula 1, but it is also a wake-up call.” But with the sport investigating the use of either synthetic or bio fuels and the new regulations scheduled only in 2026, the Englishman is not sure F1 can actually delay until then.

The team’s power unit issue obviously means his views are likely to be different. “I think we really need to consider whether 2026 is too far away for the new engine. What will that technology be? What should it be? These questions need to be answered quickly in order to give a road-map of the sport’s future.” Perhaps he has a point.

With budget caps and the cost of the current engines, things may have to change before 2026. Many of the media have mooted the departure of Honda as a move to “greener vehicles”, but this was followed by the long-term agreement to supply engines for the IndyCar series with a new 2.4-litre V6 petrol hybrid engine.

Masashi Yamamoto, Honda’s F1 chief, said: “Given that Honda has customers all over the world, there was the need for us to move our top engineers at an earlier stage to working on future carbon-neutral products.

“From our point of view, our work in IndyCar is run by Honda Performance Development, which is an independent part of Honda within America. In F1’s case, a lot of our research and development stuff is based in Japan, which meant that for our future work we had to allocate engineers.”

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