Third-best team explains future flip to currently cack powerplant

After Red Bull’s announcement of a switch from Renault to Honda engines next season, company insiders have revealed that the shock move is “purely to annoy McLaren”.

“This is absolutely an engineering-led decision,” explained a team insider. “And our engineers decided, after analysing all the data and running many hundreds of projections, that they just wanted to annoy McLaren.”

“What you have to remember is that we have Toro Rosso already running Honda power,” our source continued. “And that has given us a lot of useful, real-world data about how much the Honda engine is improving compared to the Renault unit and how annoying this must be for McLaren.”

However, our Red Bull mole denied that there was any problem with their existing Renault relationship. “Of course, we’ve had a great partnership with Renault over many years and four world championships,” our source said. “Apart from all those times Christian kept bitching about them in public and that season we tried to bin them off, realised we didn’t have any alternatives, and then had to go back and beg them for engines.”

“I have to emphasise that we love Renault,” said another high-ranking Red Bull insider. “But, as I believe Sting himself once sang, if you love somebody you have to ditch them and start seeing someone else in order to annoy McLaren.”

However, not everyone approves of Red Bull’s new attempt to annoy McLaren. “I feel sorry for Zak Brown,” said hefty pop buffoon Dane Bowers, formerly of boy band Another Buffet. “Mainly because I too often wear a gilet in the mistaken belief that it’s slimming.”