The race is on, and Red Bull will continue to use Honda engines in 2022, despite the Japanese

manufacturers' withdrawal, thanks to F1 green lighting and engine freeze.

But F1's sprint race plan is still up in the air.

I'm Ed's draw, and joining me to discuss the fallout from F1's latest decisions as Scott Mitchell and Mark Hughes.

Well, Scott, we'll get straight into it as we like to do on these newsy podcasts.

So let's start with the engine freeze itself.

So we know it's been voted through unanimously and it'll

start in 2022, but why has it happened? And what do we know about the detail? Yeah, so basically

under the previous rules, engine development was already going to be halted for three years

started in 2023.

And the idea being that F1 needed to get spending under control because these hybrids have turned out to be a lot more expensive than anybody really sort of considered.

But that meant that with Red Bull losing Honda and having this idea of taking over the engine project for 2022, it meant that

Red Bull's rivals would have been able to develop their engines for 2022, but then also

develop those engines again over the winter ahead of 2023, while Red Bull would have been left

using the engine it inherited from Honda for next year.

So it would have been out of sync and it would have risked going into this three-year period at a disadvantage.

So Red Bull has been pushing for the freeze to be brought forward.

At that vote as finally now happened, a meeting of the F1 Commission on today, on Thursday, and that vote

received unanimous support, bringing the engine freeze forward to the start of the 2022 season.

So what that means is that all the manufacturers will now have the opportunity to update their

engines at the end of, after the 2021 season finishes.

That will help make sure that they're compatible with plans for new increased percentage sustainable fuels in 2022.

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