Why Red Bull's Honda marriage hinges on its bad days

Until Formula 1 cars burst into action in Spain later this month, the teams are playing a guessing game about how they are going to stack up in 2019.

After nearly three months of being locked away, fettling designs, there has been no way of gauging which team has had a good winter and which has had a bad one, in what is a game of shadow boxing. But teams can compare data from last year to work out how much they have improved compared to the previous campaign.

That then allows them to plot how much progress they need to have made to hit performance targets.

Even at this uncertain time of the year, without a wheel having been turned in anger, it is usually possible to get enough of a hint from the mood at a team to know whether they have hit the jackpot, or have blown it and are bracing for the worst.

For Red Bull, those indications are of special interest because it has the potential to fly high or stumble in 2019, depending on how its new engine partnership with Honda plays out.

Solid progress from Honda could help Red Bull heap more pressure on Mercedes and Ferrari at the front and really stir things up. But a repeat of the struggles that marred Honda's relationship with McLaren would see all of Red Bull's best efforts turn out to be for nothing.

Judging how deep Red Bull's relationship with Renault ruptured amid frustrations about a lack of horsepower from its then engine partner, there could potentially be a danger of things turning sour with Honda too.

But, for now, such pessimism is the opposite of what the mood appears to be. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has quiet confidence, but without ever getting carried away.

Red Bull and Honda will be judged on how they cope with the days when things go wrong too

His talk of Honda having had a "solid winter" and it making "good progress" was encouraging, but there is clear evidence that Red Bull has a new mindset.

It's one that is a world away from the conflict that marred the later stages of the team's Renault relationship - where they were regularly locked in a public war of words.

"Effectively we were paying for a first class ticket and you get an economy seat," Horner says about where things had got to with Renault. "An awful lot of frustration was borne out of that. Plus the management within Renault was different to what it was when we started the relationship.

"With Honda, it being a true technical partnership, there is much more collective responsibility from both sides rather than being a customer/supplier scenario.

"We are not expecting to go to 100% from a clean sheet of paper. But what we are extremely hopeful of is that the performance will be a step from where we were in the last few years."

Horner thinks the different starting point with Honda will be especially important for Max Verstappen, who let rip at Renault last year when things didn't go his way.

"Like any racing driver, any competitive driver, inevitably when things go wrong, there is frustration," explains Horner. "But he's fully bought into the journey that we're heading on with Honda. He's working closely. And it's a different engagement as well between him and the engineering team at Honda than there was with Renault."

But will that make Verstappen more forgiving? Horner reckons so: "The problem last year was there was some antagonism. On both sides there were promises that were made that weren't delivered upon, and that inevitably ends up in a whirlwind of frustration.

"Obviously he has been through that character building experience that he has not had to deal with in previous formulas, because he's only had one year in Formula 3 before he got to Formula 1.

"But I think he's just more worldly, more experienced. He's just in a better place to be able to deal with the pressures that are placed on him."

The lines of communication between Red Bull and its engine partner seem very open. There has been talk of Red Bull staff already giving Honda some guidance on where things can be improved in terms of energy management and deployment.

"Across all areas you share experience," says Horner. "We have had a really collaborative and open approach with Honda. Communication has been really honest and very open about areas of strength and areas of weakness, and obviously we have brought the experience that we have on the table. Honda has done likewise.

"Hopefully out of that is a positive trajectory forward with performance coming on the stopwatch."

But at the same time, Red Bull isn't expecting Honda to deliver an engine to beat Mercedes and Ferrari this season, so its expectations are being kept in check.

Honda is expected to have the third-best engine in performance terms, although Renault's much-discussed progress could be a surprise. Rumours regarding Honda's reliability status also linger.

Horner admits that Honda could face a pretty big challenge in getting through the campaign with just the three engines allocated by the rules, but he's ready to accept taking penalties for the right reasons.

"So long as we see progress, then it is far easier to make an unreliable car fast, than a slow reliable car fast," he says. "That has always been our approach, which has been to push to the maximum. That is what we continue to do because we believe it continues to yield the most performance."

What Horner wants to see above all else is progress. Red Bull wants to be able to challenge at all venues, and not fear power tracks, as well as see consistent improvement.

"Effectively we were paying for a first class ticket with Renault and you get an economy seat. And an awful lot of frustration was borne out of that" Christian Horner

"Progress is measured about performance of the car relative to the opposition," he says. "If we won four races but were further away in pace across the season that would be disappointing.

"What we're hoping is we're able to have a more consistent, sustained challenge. That we don't fear going to tracks like Monza, like Spa, like Bahrain, Azerbaijan. Those types of venues that put huge emphasis on power unit performance.

"We will be judged against Mercedes and Ferrari - where we are relative to them. We knew very accurately where we were performance-wise, because with the analysis tools that are currently available that teams invest in, you can get a very clear picture."

But Red Bull and Honda will be judged on how they cope with the days when things go wrong. How those dark moments play out can sometimes be more important than those afternoons when things go right on the track.

It was something Renault discovered the hard way.