Red Bull has hired Ben Hodgkinson from Mercedes as the technical director for Red Bull Powertrains as the Austrian company takes in the Honda IP.
View PhotosHodgkinson has been at Mercedes since 2001 and was the head of mechanical engineering recently
Red Bull will be taking in the Honda IP at the end of the year and form Red Bull powertrains, a full-fledged subsidiary that will manage the engines for its F1 cars since it will lose Honda’s support at the end of the year. For this, now Red Bull has hired Ben Hodgkinson from Mercedes as the technical director for Red Bull Powertrains.
Hodgkinson joins after almost a 20-year stint at Mercedes, in which he was part of the team that developed the turbo hybrid power unit that has allowed the team from Brackley to dominate the last decade of F1. He was the head of mechanical engineering in their engine division and was one of the senior-most hands. Hodgkinson was also part of the team that developed engines for McLaren in the early 2000s.
Famously, Red Bull lobbied for an engine development freeze as it didn’t want to adopt a customer engine from Renault. It wanted a full works status and wanted an engine that was customised for its chassis which has been dubbed the best in the business with its high-rake philosophy.
Many believe the Honda power unit is the class of the field and Hodgkinson will be responsible for it
“With full integration into the chassis team to deliver future power units that enable Red Bull to compete for world championships,” said Red Bull at the announcement.
More importantly, Red Bull is signalling that Hodgkinson will be more focused on the future where he will help develop a custom Red Bull engine for the next set of engine regulations that come in 2025.
“We are delighted to welcome Ben to Red Bull Powertrains as Technical Director,” said Red Bull boss Christian Horner.
“He comes to this hugely exciting project as a proven race winner and as an innovator capable of leading a like-minded team of highly skilled engineers. When Red Bull announced the creation of Red Bull Powertrains it was also announcing a new phase of the company’s ambition in Formula 1 – to bring every aspect of car design in-house and to put our destiny in our own hands. The ultimate expression of that is the development of a Red Bull power unit to meet the next generation of Formula 1 engine regulations. Ben’s appointment signals our long-term intent and we will support him and his team with every available resource required in order to succeed,” proclaimed Horner.
Since the advent of the turbo-hybrid era, Red Bull has had issues with its engine suppliers. All this started with a strained relationship with Renault with whom it had won 4 world titles on the trot between 2010-2013 because of the blow diffuser concept. But Renault alongside the rest of the field fell behind Mercedes in 2014 when the new turbo-hybrid engines came into play.
Then Renault also acquired the Lotus team to have a works unit of its own from 2016 onwards which added strain to the relationship as Red Bull was of the belief that it neither was getting a reliable engine nor was it getting something optimised for its own chassis.
In 2018, Red Bull adopted the Honda engine for Toro Rosso its B-team. And in 2019, it then dumped Renault altogether for the main Red Bull team and found more competitiveness. In 2021, Honda has brought a powerful new engine which many believe is more powerful than even Mercedes.
Honda is giving access to the engines to Red Bull and in the future the Austrian giant will have its own IP
But Red Bull found itself again in a spot when Honda announced in September 2020 that it was leaving F1 at the end of 2021. Honda cited reasons around electrification as the main reason something which it ratified recently by aiming to become a fully electric car company by 2040. At the time, Mercedes ruled out supplying to Red Bull because of capacity constraints, while Ferrari was open to the idea, but Red Bull wasn’t keen. That left its former partner Renault, who was obligated to supply to Red Bull as it wasn’t supplying to anyone but again Red Bull didn’t want an inferior engine.
That’s why it lobbied for an engine freeze so that it could acquire Honda’s IP and work on a long term project to have its own engine division. That’s where Ben Hodgkinson comes in. For the future.
“I’m extremely excited to be joining Red Bull Powertrains as Technical Director. It was not easy to make the decision to leave HPP after almost 20 years but the opportunity to take on such a far-reaching and important project is a great honour,” said Hodgkinson.
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“Red Bull is a serious player in Formula 1 and have been our biggest rival in the hybrid era, so I’m looking forward to seeing what we can achieve together in this new phase of the company’s journey,” he added.
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