Red Bull and its junior team AlphaTauri are set to reveal a special one-off white livery for the Turkish GP this weekend.
The 2021 Formula 1 season will be Honda’s last season in F1, this weekend was set for the Japanese Grand Prix but due to the COVID-19 pandemic the 2021 Formula 1 calendar was rescheduled and the Suzuka race was cancelled. Therefore, Red Bull decided to commemorate Honda this weekend in Istanbul park.
The unique liveries used by both teams will be a mark of celebrating their partnership with Honda which proved to be very successfull. The liveries will be also used to give the engine manufacturer’s fans in Japan a chance to wave goodbye to the company in F1.
Both Verstappen’s and Perez’s Red Bull RB16B cars will be donning a predominantly white livery, whereas Gasly’s and Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri AT02s will display a special one-word Japanese message saying ‘arigato’ which means ‘thank you’. The main reason that the teams chose the white livery is because the first time Honda won a Formula 1 race with both chassis and engine, was in a white car back in 1965 at the Mexican Grand Prix. The car was driven by American driver Richie Ginther.
AlphaTauri was the first team to link up with Honda back in 2018 when they were named Toro Rosso. Despite having three unsuccessful years with engine supplier McLaren, Honda’s partnership proved to be a success as Gasly won the Italian Grand Prix in 2020.
Red Bull Formula 1 team partnered with Honda in 2019. The partnership has been fruitful as the team has enjoyed 13 race wins whith 8 of them being in the current season.
“We had all been looking forward to giving Honda’s Japanese fans a chance to celebrate our extremely successful relationship in Formula 1 on home soil at Suzuka,” Red Bull boss Christian Horner said.
“With the race falling victim to the pandemic, we just couldn’t let the weekend pass without paying tribute to Honda and their amazing home fans by bringing a little bit of their heritage to Istanbul.
“The livery chosen for our cars pays homage to Honda’s remarkable F1 journey and hopefully we can give fans another victory in those legendary colours this weekend.”
From 2022, Red Bull Powertrains, a new enterprise set up at the team’s Milton Keynes base, will be taking over the engine supply to Red Bull and AlphaTauri.
