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Red Bull Bids Honda A Fond Farewell With Special White Livery

The tribute includes a one-off special livery in throwback Honda Championship White with red accent, paying tribute to the rising sun livery the company wore when it first joined F1 in the 1960s. The cars also carry the characters for the Japanese word ‘arigato’ with a hearty and heart-felt thank you to the powerplant manufacturer. The Alpha Tauri cars will also carry the thank you message.

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Image for article titled Red Bull Bids Honda A Fond Farewell With Special White Livery — Image: Red Bull

Rather than switching to a new powertrain supplier in 2022, Red Bull will take over the intellectual property and production of Honda’s V6 hybrid power units later this year ahead of the revised chassis requirements next season. It would likely be too much of a pain in the ass for Red Bull to have to build a brand new chassis to new regulations and build a relationship with a new powerplant manufacturer at the same time. As a result the fizzy energy drinks company will start its own engine division called Red Bull Powertrains.

RBR’s Max Verstappen currently sits 2 points behind championship leader Lewis Hamilton with seven rounds remaining in the championship. Perhaps this special livery will be enough to push him to his eighth victory this season, or perhaps it will go about as well as the last time Mercedes decided to run a special one-off tribute livery. We’ll see when the Turkish Grand Prix goes off this Sunday.

How Good Was Valtteri Bottas, Really, At Mercedes?

To get the full picture, you’ll have to watch the video. Stuart compares qualifying results, which show that Hamilton has pretty consistently outclassed Bottas when it comes to securing a higher starting position. Stuart also compares stats from the Hamilton vs. Rosberg era, so we get a much clearer picture of what we’re talking about. And while Hamilton also consistently outclassed Rosberg, Rosberg also took pole position and the front row more frequently than Bottas. In fact, Rosberg’s average qualifying time was faster than Hamilton’s.

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There’s more data to back things up, but the conclusion Stuart reaches is very much the one that many other fans have reached: Bottas has been a solidly good driver, but he was never destined to be a World Champion. And that’s exactly where Mercedes wanted him to be.