Honda is not erratic. Honda and other manufacturers have already made the "decision". The issue is that it's not really the decision. It's an algorithm. What do you do if you want to put your new engine into a great car? You give it RedBull in 2014 or to McLaren in early 2000s. Oh wait. The timing is wrong. Those teams already signed with a different engine manufacturer. What do you do then? You give the engine to a mid-field team? Ain't going to work. Besides the engine, you probably need to pump a lot of money into this team. This is something that a lot of companies are not comfortable doing. At this point, they would rather just buy the whole team. They don't want to trust a run out of the mill potentially incompetent mid-field team with the engine AND tens of millions of money. So this is why they feel far more comfortable taking over the whole team.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark
When Honda wanted to return in 21st century, the top teams were not "available", so they bought former BAR team and made it into Honda team. When Renault wanted to return, Williams was already a BMW shop, so Renault was forced to buy Benetton and setup a "Renault team". When BMW's relationship with Williams started to unravel, they tried to buy Williams, then bought Sauber instead. It seems like like setting up a factory team is a losing game. It's much better to leave this job to the professionals. Ford, Toyota, BMW, and Honda did not achieve much in the last decade. Mercedes took over McLaren for 15 years but had limited success (1 constructor title, 3 driver titles, and one big scandal). Only Renault did well as a factory team it seems. However, having figured out that running a successful F1 team is stupid expensive, Renault sold off its factory Renault team as soon as they got into a cozy relationship with a front running team, RedBull.
Honda has timed its current return to F1 very well. McLaren is no longer owned by Mercedes, but McLaren still buys Mercedes engines in order to compete against the Mercedes team. This is not a good position to be in for McLaren. Besides, McLaren probably thinks that a team of their caliber deserves not to pay exorbitant prices for their engine. The biggest mistake Honda made was to quit F1 after 1992. McLaren became a Mercedes shop and after that Honda was forced to fend for itself. Right now is a good timing to start supplying the engine to McLaren. I wish they didn't hesitate so long, and started supplying the engine in 2014. I hope this signals the return of the old Honda, the Honda that not only wins GPs, but also builds great road cars, like Acura NSX, Integra, and Honda S2000.
