Red Bull are not entertaining a customer engine deal with Aston Martin, at least not before the end of the decade. Speaking in Austin during the United States Grand Prix weekend, Red Bull Racing team principal Laurent Mekies shut down the suggestion that Red Bull Powertrains is in talks with anyone about selling its new Red Bull Ford unit outside the group.
“Are we having serious discussions with anyone about supplying engines to another team? No. We don’t feel we’re ready for that.”
Mekies would not lock the position in beyond the short term. “Nothing will change in the next year or so,” he told reporters, before adding that longer out everything is still on the table.
“Is that set in stone for the next five years? No, because I don’t know what will happen over the next five years.”
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The crack of light he left is enough to keep Aston Martin’s name in the conversation. Asked by GPblog on the same weekend whether his team had sounded Red Bull out about Ford power units, Aston Martin’s Mike Krack chose not to deny it. He went straight to Honda instead.
“All I can say is that we have a partner, a long-term partner, and that is Honda,” Krack told GPblog, adding: “We’re going to claim our first victory together.”
That is a statement of loyalty, not a denial of the question that was actually asked.
Why the question is live at all
Honda marked its 500th officially registered grand prix entry at Circuit of the Americas with commemorative branding on both Aston Martin cars, and the weekend produced the kind of headline the manufacturer did not want. Lance Stroll started the race from the pit lane after Aston Martin fitted a sixth internal-combustion engine, one past his season allocation, plus a seventh turbocharger and a fresh set of ancillary components to the back of his AMR26.
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The Red Bull Ford unit, by contrast, has drawn, in Mekies’ own words, “a lot of unwanted positive publicity about the performance of our engine”, enough that several teams have come knocking.
Newey keeps the Honda line
Adrian Newey, now embedded in Aston Martin’s technical leadership, has publicly stuck with Honda. In comments around the US Grand Prix weekend, Newey told NewsHub that Honda is still behind on raw power under the 2026 regulations, but praised the Japanese manufacturer’s work rate and pointed to internal projects aimed at closing the gap before 2027.
Mekies’ own framing of why the phone keeps ringing is that Red Bull Powertrains has drawn interest from several teams off the back of its engine’s performance. His answer, for now, is to put the receiver down.
For Aston Martin, that leaves the standings the same as before the weekend: contractually tied to Honda, publicly backing Honda, and declining to shut any other door.
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