Formula 1’s Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey says his group was blindsided by the fact its then-incoming works power unit partner Honda had only retained about 30% of its original world championship-winning staff going into the project.
Sounds like things at Honda have been a mess for longer than anyone but the heads of Aston Martin knew of.
I’m not sure we know enough about his/their exit from Red Bull to know for sure how much information he had about an outgoing manufacturer. IIRC Red Bull were recruiting heavily from Mercedes and other teams PU divisions too, not just bringing in everyone from Honda.
I would assume Aston Martin trusted Honda to rebuild with people who had previous experience as much as possible and for whatever reason that didn’t happen to the extent they expected. The way he’s quoted in the article makes it sound like the people at AM didn’t do their due diligence until it was already too late, which is absolutely on them.
I’m not sure we know enough about his/their exit from Red Bull to know for sure how much information he had about an outgoing manufacturer. IIRC Red Bull were recruiting heavily from Mercedes and other teams PU divisions too, not just bringing in everyone from Honda.
I would assume Aston Martin trusted Honda to rebuild with people who had previous experience as much as possible and for whatever reason that didn’t happen to the extent they expected. The way he’s quoted in the article makes it sound like the people at AM didn’t do their due diligence until it was already too late, which is absolutely on them.
Honda’s UK team was for the hybrid unit, the Mercedes HPP poaches for the ICE. That’s well known. In fact, only a year ago (pretty late) Honda bought back their original UK factory from Red Bull https://www.motorsport-total.com/formel-1/news/fabrik-von-red-bull-uebernommen-honda-legt-wieder-in-europa-los-25030404 (in German, the first source I could find).