95% of everything right now is people jumping to conclusions. Even Alonso sticking with Mclaren because of a switch to Renault seems to be jumping to conclusions. I mean ultimately Alonso has stuck to his story of "I don't care about second places, I came here for a chance to win again".... so how does Renault at Mclaren add up to likely to win soon? If Mclaren got a Mercedes I could see him staying thinking he could win, but getting the third best engine instead of the 4th is according to him, pointless. So while a lot of people are saying Mclaren switched to Renault to appease Alonso that is just a crappy narrative people are jumping to. To me Mclaren have left Honda because Honda are a complete joke, if Alonso stays is a separate matter and for me if Alonso stays it proves he was at Mclaren for the money and all this stuff about not wanting second places and believing Mclaren was his best chance of a title is an excuse for him grabbing money. I said so back at the time, he wanted out of Ferrari, screwed himself out of any options when all the competitive teams moved behind his back and he was left with moving to a different sport or taking the 30-40mil a year from Mclaren. Now, I wouldn't turn down that money, but I also wouldn't dress it up as I don't care about second places, etc.
If he's true to his word, he's off, if he stays he was always there for the money. Anyway, the whole RBR are looking at Honda for 2019 is also a random narrative that gives the press something to say.
Mclaren just left Honda because they are an embarrassment and don't believe they can be remotely competitive next year either, but RBR from the outside massively outscoring a similar budget team who have their own reliability problems are considering a move to an insanely less reliable team with far worse problems and far worse performance.... nonsense.
If Honda suddenly came good in 2018 that might make people move to them in 2019, but Mclaren might go back, RBR could switch engines, so could Williams or anyone else. Right now the situation for RBR is the same situation as 3 years ago or 10 years ago, they'll take the best engine available to them at any given moment in time if and when they can move. There is zero indication, like literally not one little sign anywhere, that Honda will be better than Renault at any time so there is no chance RBR are considering switching engines, none at all. If Honda turn around their engine, of course they'd consider changing but so what. If Renault had an engine as good and as reliable as Ferrari, if Honda had a better engine than Renault they'd still consider switching.
The only things we know are, RBR has repeatedly commented on TR being a financial burden with little reward now, there have been rumours of them trying to find a buyer for TR for a few years and have been gaining strength in the past 18 months. The only thing the latest deal points to is that Honda were willing to give up more sponsorship money than Renault and having Honda in the TR reduces the financial burden while also lining up TR for being the most likely team Honda might consider buying if they wanted to run a full team which seems fairly likely. Anything else is seemingly people jumping to conclusions.
