Red Bull's Honda engine developed further than McLaren's

Honda hope that their current design of power unit will not need to be drastically changed, majorly improving the odds of delivering a reliable engine to Red Bull in 2019. A previous switch in design for the 2017 season put Honda back in its partnership with McLaren, prompting the British team to eventually switch to Renault.

Red Bull are making the opposite switch to McLaren, ditching Renault for Honda, having grown frustrated with the French marque's inability to keep pace with Mercedes and Ferrari.

Although recent reports have suggested that development for 2019's PU has not been completely smooth, Red Bull continue to make confident claims about their 2019 horsepower.

With their F1 project continuing on similar lines into a third year, the Japanese marque expect major improvements to come as a result next season.

"We can carry over the current design, or concept, of PU," Honda F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe told Motorsport.

"We don't know exactly [what the limit is] because we haven't achieved a high level but we started with another concept and changed it for 2017.

"We learned something earlier, then changed it. In 2018, we carried over this concept and improved reliability and performance.

"At the moment we think this concept change is not wrong. It's suitable. Still we [intend to] carry over this concept and try to improve."

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