godlameroso wrote:I don't think that's happening, doesn't Honda have their engine lab in Milton Keynes? They could be part of the partnership, I don't see BMW touching F1 with a 60ft pole.
They're sinking money into a GTLM and GTE program for next year.
As I understand it, Honda's race development facility is at Sakura, in Japan. It's not F1-only (they do engines for touring cars, GPE etc), and HRD Sakura is quite a large facility.
In addition to engines, they also do complete cars there (eg. Super Formula, GT, Touring cars, etc).
There are now two Honda buildings in Milton Keynes.
One is the ex-Mugen Honda building, which was trading even when Honda decided to get out of most of its racing activities. It has some vent pipes for underground tanks, so they can run engines up, but I think it's more of a local stores/warehouse/rebuild place than anything else.
I don't think they really "develop" the engines (like, on dynos with test parts) here - I think that happens at Sakura.
The other building is the one Honda just built last year, which is an R&D facility. The planning documents in the UK are public, and the ones for HRD MK are here:
https://publicaccess2.milton-keynes.gov ... E2KKW00003
I think both buildings are now satellites of Sakura.
I doubt that even with the new building, they have anything like the scale to operate independently, but I only live locally (I'm 5 minutes from those buildings) and I don't have direct business dealings with Honda so this is mostly supposition from what I've seen locally.
I can tell you that the buildings aren't all that busy (their car parks are empty at the weekends, for example) - which is not something you can say about McLaren down in Woking.
I bet Sakura is pretty busy most of the time too.