Honda very excited: "Tost expected a victory only after five years".
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Pierre Gasly rewrote history at the Italian GP at Monza by winning in his AlphaTauri. Sebastian Vettel preceded him twelve years earlier in the same team then called Toro Rosso. Honda leader Masashi Yamamoto is delighted with the victory of the Italian team.
Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri received same treatment
Honda began supplying power sources to the then Toro Rosso as early as 2018. The following year Red Bull Racing would only follow. After a painful and difficult marriage with McLaren, Honda finally hoped to take a good path in F1. In 2019 it turned out that they had done so after they took several victories with Max Verstappen.
Now that the daughter team AlphaTauri has also won a victory, Yamamoto looks back on the relationships between the brands. On AS-Web.jp, the Honda chief says: "When Honda also started supplying Red Bull, we didn't immediately treat them as the factory team. Both stables received the same treatment. The fact that AlfaTauri has now been able to win does us a great deal of good at Honda".
Tost only expected victory after five years
"Before we even started negotiations to work with Red Bull, I first went to Franz Tost," Yamamoto continues. "When I told him about the plans to provide power units to Red Bull as well, he said, 'Of course, you should do that'.
"He then went on and said: 'It will take at least five years before we can win a race with Toro Rosso. So Honda has to go for Red Bull and go for victories sooner'. I've never forgotten those words. I thought I wouldn't win a race with AlphaTauri for five years, I never expected that we would claim gold in the fiftieth race".