After spending much of 2015 in turmoil, Red Bull Racing finally announced that they would be staying in Formula One for 2016 at the back end of last year.
After a seemingly irreversible fall-out with engine supplier Renault, Red Bull courted Mercedes, Ferrari and Honda over the possibility of them supplying the four-time F1 constructors champions for the upcoming season.
Mercedes refused to make an offer after considering the approach, Ferrari appeared to only be happy to supply a one-year old specification engines and an approach to Honda was vetoed by McLaren.
With Red Bull close to exiting the sport the team reconciled their relationship with Renault.
However, the engines will not use Renault naming and will instead be TAG Heuer branded, similar to the McLaren TAG Group-badged Porsche engines in the 1980’s.
It’s unlikely that this will see any major shift in improved performance and Red Bull’s chief technical officer Adrian Newey is none the wiser on what the team can achieve next season.
Newey has actually refused to make predictions and has suggested that the team could fall behind McLaren Honda in 2016 and could well even struggle to compete with sister team Toro Rosso who will be racing with year old Ferrari power-units.
‘Honda I’m sure will be making a good step forwards for McLaren. Even Toro Rosso having a one-year out-of-date Ferrari engine will have a good step on their performance. So it’s very difficult for us to forecast exactly where we’re going to be.’ he told Sky Sports.
‘It’s very clear at the moment that whilst both chassis and power unit are important, there is a greater potential for differentiation in the power unit than a fairly restrictive set of chassis regulations,’
‘It’s going to be difficult but there are still opportunities to make a difference with the chassis and we’ll be working hard.’
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