The cars looked different, the tracks were different, and for the Honda Motor Company, entering Formula One was a completely new challenge.

The man tasked by Sotiro Honda himself to put together that new Formula One team didn't even really know what the sport was, and he had to go and learn from European manufacturers and European teams what Formula One was all about.

But those early efforts netted early success. 1965, Honda's first victory in Formula One came in Mexico City.

But after that, Honda's efforts in Formula One continued for a little while before the manufacturer quit the sport.

But in the 1980s, Honda was back.

This time, not as a complete team, but as an engine supplier.

Initially with the Spirit team, then Lotus, and later a hugely successful partnership with McLaren.

Ayrton Senna's famous victories, winning every race in a season bar one, a feat only repeated by another Honda-powered driver later on in history.

Attempts for a full-works Honda team were made once again, but again success was fleeting at best.

Honda left Formula One, once again just on the cusp of introducing one of the most advanced and most sophisticated Formula One cars of all time.

But when Honda returned to Formula One as a power unit supplier, after some initial struggles, everything turned around.

A partnership with Red Bull Racing proved to be a huge success, and Max Verstappen became the dominant force in Formula One.

All of that powered by those Honda V6 engines.

And as the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix gets underway to celebrate that partnership, the Red Bulls have been painted in the traditional Honda red and white livery.

And it looks fantastic seeing those cars out on track and running at high speed and near the front of the field.

Not that one.

This one.

The red and white Hondas do look spectacular, but it's not just the paint job that's new down at the Red Bull garage.

They've made some significant changes to the back end of the car.

But before we take any closer look at those new components, I think we should talk to one of the key people behind the development of the RB21.

Paul Monaghan has a lot to say about these changes.

So the brake cooling, must I tell you where the next two races are?

OK, so it's a bit harder on the brakes.

So in terms of getting ourselves prepped, we can bring it here, and then we are set to deal with the upcoming races rather than trying to dismantle it in a week turnaround.

The rear low wishbone is an optimisation that we've been able to put on in the GAP since China.

It's a shroud, so that's a small improvement.

It's just a part of the ongoing process of just getting the car better and better and And what can you tell us about the engine cover?

Some changes in that area as well?

Again, it's minor, but we've had the opportunity to do it.

How we've done it isn't as expensive as a whole moulding.

So really what we've done is to change the aspect ratios of the width and the height if you like of the exit at the back.

It's a small improvement in the cooling and it gives us a little less loss onto the rear wing.

So again, it's a small improvement.

We'll take it and we'll bring it here.

So let's take a closer look at some of those detailed changes.

Here you can see the rear suspension from the front.

Now there is a little saying in the English language, what goes in must come out.

And that's something that you need to think about when you're looking at the brake cooling ducts around the inner face of the rear wheels.

That's obviously something that has been changed by Red Bull for this race.

Now it doesn't look too much from the front, but when you look at the rear end of it here, it's pretty spectacular level of little detail.

And you can see even these little inserts that Red Bull have put in the brake duct cooling exits, this section here.

You can see the amount of work, the amount of detailed engineering that's going into this componentry.

And the fact that it's all working together because those revised lower wishbones are working with these revised cooling outlets because this isn't about brake cooling necessarily.

Suzuka Circuit has one of the lowest cooling demands of anywhere on the calendar.

So the fact that Red Bull have introduced this change for Suzuka, I don't think that's necessarily to do with cooling the brakes, regardless of what the next two races are, Mr Monaghan.

I think you're playing around with some clever aerodynamic components here.

The other part that's new on the car is something that teams play around with quite a lot.

Again, it's cooling, but I think also more to do with aerodynamic gains.

Have a look at this, a slightly tighter engine cover at the rear, just tightening things up.

Again, it's not a particularly cooling dominated circuit, relatively high average speed.

They can close things up a little bit on the bodywork, though not to the amount that we've seen Racing Bulls, the confusingly similarly named Honda-powered team, also owned by Red Bull and driving white cars around Suzuka as well.

Quite nice to see, but a little bit muddled with the driver changes that have gone on as well.

But those driver changes are all down to one thing, or at least that's what the drivers say and some of the people in the paddock are reporting as well.

The Red Bull RB21 doesn't seem to be a particularly easy car to drive.

In fact, in free practice one, we saw both Yuki Tsunoda and Max Verstappen struggle to get the best out of the car around some of the corners on track with some lurid slides in the hairpin and in Spoon Corner as well.

So it does seem that there is a slightly snappy, slightly tricky characteristic to the car.

But it is a topic that Monaghan does have a few very Paul Monaghan style thoughts on.

It's interesting hearing that because you quite often hear engineers talking about different driver sensitivities, how some drivers are more sensitive than others to a loose rear end or a slightly loose rear axle.

Maybe Liam Lawson was struggling from a little bit of that and Yuki Tsunoda may be slightly less sensitive to it.

In free practice one, we saw Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda separated by just one tenth of a second, which is next to nothing in the world of Formula One, particularly as Tsunoda hadn't really spent any time in the RB21 other than a bit of time in the Red Bull simulator, which isn't quite the same thing, even though it's a very accurate tool nonetheless.

Now a few people had speculated that Honda might have done the old Suzuka special trick by turning up their favoured driver's engine and giving them a bit more performance.

Well, looking at the data, Jolyon Palmer pretty much convincingly debunked that in commentary on F1 TV.

The two drivers were accelerating at exactly the same rate, reaching similar top speeds.

Yuki Tsunoda on some characteristics of the circuit, some corner exit, was actually a bit stronger than Max Verstappen, who was the quicker driver overall, but not by any significance.

We'll see what happens as the weekend goes on, but it does look like that handling characteristic of the RB21 is able to be handled by some drivers better than others.

Not throwing shade at Liam Lawson, but maybe the car just didn't suit him, in the same way the RB20 didn't suit Checo Perez, particularly towards the end of the season last year.

Another car that does have a slightly awkward characteristic is being supported by Honda's bitter rivals in Japan.

I am, of course, talking about Toyota.

What do you mean, Toyota?

They're not in Formula One anymore.

Well, they are.

This is the rear wing of the Haas car at Austin last year.

Toyota announcing their partnership with the Haas team, which carries on into the 2025 season.

But starting the 2025 season, Haas had a little bit of an issue with their cars, it's fair to say.

And in fact, an aerodynamic characteristic that was described by Okamatsu as a fundamental issue was making the Haas extremely difficult to drive in high-speed corners around the bumpy surface of Melbourne.

That characteristic sort of disappeared into China with its new smooth surface and the Haas car became a lot more competitive.

But the team know that they have to solve this problem.

What seems to be happening in high-speed corners, the car starts to oscillate.

It starts to bump off the surface of the racetrack and go into almost that porpoising phase we saw back in 2022.

The drivers found this utterly, utterly undriveable and the team knew they needed to make some changes to the floor.

Before we get into those changes, I think we need to hear a little bit from Ayo Okamatsu himself at his home race, talking about what's wrong with the Haas.

Obviously, that was a shock to have that issue in Melbourne, so this modification to the floor is aimed at specifically solving that issue, but we had to shortcut the process quite a lot to get it here.

So there is a certain level of risk, but we had to take this risk because otherwise you're completely exposed to have the same issue as Melbourne.

Well, Okamatsu-san there just sort of hinted at how big a gamble this really is, but actually I think it's fair to say this is pretty unusual behaviour from a Formula 1 team, because along with that lovely new Secura livery on the Toyota-branded Haas, there has been a pretty significant change underneath the car, which we can't see because it's in the middle of the floor, but that change wasn't fully evaluated in the wind tunnel until after the team had already manufactured the components and shipped them off to Suzuka.

So the parts were fitted to the car.

The team weren't entirely certain how they would perform on a real car on a real racetrack because they just didn't have the time to turn it around.

They had to do something though.

They couldn't go into Suzuka with its medium and high-speed corner flowing layout, and while it's partly resurface, it's partly not, they couldn't go into that race weekend without knowing that their floor was really working properly.

So they had to take the gamble on a bit of intuition, a bit of CFD, and a little bit of wind tunnel testing after the parts had been manufactured, and it's fair to say looking at the Free Practice 1 data at least, it hasn't really worked.

Haas are still propping up most of the field, and the only cars really in a similar time bracket to them are the two Saubers, and that's another team with its own issues to unpick, and we'll be taking a look at them a little bit later here on Tech Talk.

But it's not all bad news for Toyota-backed teams and drivers at Suzuka.

Ryo Hirakawa, driving the Alpine unusually in Free Practice 1, was quicker than Pierre Gasly, the team's regular driver, and the reason he was so much quicker?

Well, he knew the circuit a little bit better than Gasly, who himself has a lot of experience around Suzuka, but Hirakawa, home-side advantage, got some great times in the first sector, and that was enough to put him ahead of the Frenchman, but really impressive nonetheless from the Toyota-backed driver.

Will we see more from Toyota?

Will we see more from Haas?

We're certainly going to be seeing more from Red Bull as this weekend goes on and as the season goes on, and we'll be here watching it all on Tech Talk.