Opinion | Honda's poorly made decision

Honda’s performances in recent races are commendable. The raw performance has allowed for the Red Bull car to display impressive straight-line speed. However, their decision to leave F1 was not only premature but ill-measured.

Rundown

Around early October last year, Honda announced that it would withdraw from Formula One at the end of 2021. This came as a surprise, as up until that point Honda seemed committed to F1. With Red Bull and Alpha Tauri both powered by the Japanese company, this left both teams to scramble to try and find alternate options.

Honda accredited their departure to a lack of sustainability focus from F1, an interesting statement, seeing as they continue their endeavours in other motorsports. Most pundits speculated that a primary cause was the Covid-19 pandemic, limiting sales and ability to expand on the Honda F1 project. The brief stint at McLaren wouldn’t have helped either, with heavy criticism damaging their public perception and branding. Hence, the decision was clear to Honda’s board in Japan to exit the sport.  

Recently

After the announcement, Honda stated that they would bring forward their planned developments from 2022 into 2021. This decision was made to see out their time with multiple wins, if not a championship. It most certainly has paid dividends, with strong straight-line speed and utter Red Bull dominance on the long straights of the Austrian Grand Prix Circuit.

Honda will also likely be proud of its reliability improvements. Currently, no significant power unit related failures have occurred for the Alpha Tauri or Red Bull drivers. Plus, while most other teams received component changes for their power units, Honda was able to extend theirs without any fear of failure.

Verdict

Granted, the massive boost in power which Red Bull has received is courtesy of Honda’s departure. However, Honda still had the technology and resources to create an incredible engine that now looks capable of challenging the title. Yet, Honda’s F1 branch was unable to communicate this and their aims to Honda’s board in Japan. The board likely felt enough time and money was given and therefore saw no reason to continue.

The F1 project and board could not see eye to eye. Now, with the recent string of performances shown, it would seem to be a mistake to exit from F1. An irreversible one, as now Honda will leave at the peak of their performances in the turbo-hybrid era. Ultimately, it came down to a business's poor internal communications, and with it we lose a formidable corporation in the motoring world.