The new regulations in addition with the switch to a different engine makes it rather difficult to foresee what might happen next year, but there's been some interesting comments about Honda and their relationship to Red bull.
Beyond reliability, Red bull clearly stated they want more power from the engine, and regardless of the solution employed, Honda shouldn't worry about its packaging and Red bull would compensate on the design of the car to accommodate more power (basically the opposite of the size zero at McLaren).
After having seen the recent Aston martin Valkyrie engine presentation, it's clearly pointed that Adrian Newey is not only guiding aero, but also very aware of engine packaging.
My point is, it's lovely from Red bull to say "do your best engine wise Honda, we can compensate on the car", but I highly doubt they would pass on the opportunity to package the car as aggressively as possible from the start.
Their packaging (in my opinion) as been causing them more issues on the Renault engine than the two other team, already in the v8 era they had reliability issues (2009, 2010). But that's most likely because they are asking more of the engine than anybody else (drilled holes during winter testing are a good example).
Based on that, are they going to keep their X-wing side-pod arrangement, make it more extreme or find something else? I do think that design allows for more freedom than a more conventional side impact structure layout.
In an ideal situation, with enough power from the engine they don't need to be that aggressive on their gearbox and internals, creating a virtuous circle of performance and reliability.
If both parties are open for mutual change, the result will be almighty on the track.
Realistically, with the one year continuous test of the engine by Torro Rosso, by now they should have a descent idea of what's what and be able to integrate it early enough in the drafting of the 2019 chassis.
Some references in case some need them:
https://fr.motorsport.com/f1/news/red-b ... t/3195390/ (Engine packaging. French article)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk8ZrN__nmA (Valkyrie video, it's worth watching everything)
nope
