F1 2015 L'écurie Lotus rachetée par Renault F1 2015 ? L'écurie Lotus rachetée par Renault ? - Automoto - TF1 Sorry, its in French. The article says that the rumours in Silverstone paddock was the imminent purchase by Renault of the Lotus team from the Genii group ; a team Renault sold in a hurry after the Singapore crashgate scandal. Grosjean welcome the idea of a French team, with Alain Prost as sporting manager. What that would mean for the future of Renault as Red Bull and Toro Rosso engine supplier is not known yet. Also, the supply of Mercedes engines to Lotus would also stop probably not before Renault engineers had a good look at them!
The Professor was one hell of a fine jockey, but history tells us a completely **** team principal. Not sure what would be different this time round. "A French team"? WTF!? Fauxtus indeed..... Anyway, look what happened when Ferrari decided to be Italian again! You try and hire the best talent regardless of origin. I wouldn't care if the guy is from Mars (or a girl from Venus?) if (s)he can see the air and/or design a PU that works...... No matter, the bean counters at Renault must be quietly bricking it. If it should happen, and the rumors are certainly getting stronger, I wonder if the *******s at Genii will come out ahead?..... Remember, these are the clowns who've promised huge injections of cash more than once. Cheers, Ian
Sure, we screw up in building a proper engine so lets try a complete team. Makes sence, French sence..
Hopefully, if Prost is nominated sporting director, he won't have access to the money box this time. Yes, buying Lotus and rebranding it as Renault poses a problem. The French public didn't support the last Renault team in Enstone (ex-Benetton, the same Genii team) because it wasn't based in France. The French want their team in France, with French personel and French drivers; otherwise it's not French for them. It's a question of national pride. The birthplace of the Renault team is at Viry-Chatillon, South of Paris, and anything else will have little support, mostly if it's staffed by "limeys" and with foreign drivers. That's an insult to Gallic feelings ... Could you imagine the Scuderia being moved to another country? Would it still be an Italian team? I really wonder why Renault bothers. After all, there is no French GP anymore, and the support for F1 is fading away. The French are endurance mad now.
+1 Utterly ridiculous to try and be ''French'' or whatever nation. Not the best way to start a business if that's your focus...
Renault pronounced we' no. As in, "We no win unless the engines get sorted! F! any ideas of designing and constructing the rest of the car."
I was in the Lotus paddock and suite last year at COTA, it seemed like everyone working for them was French.
I actually think Prost was a decent team manager. That team failed for other reasons than his management.
Sorry but Prost was crap as team manager, he criticized everyone but he was never to blame...he had top notch facilities, top drivers, a constructor behind and yet he failed miserably...
No, you don't know about French politics, and they played a big role in Prost Grand Prix downfall. Alain Prost was encouraged to take over Ligier, when Guy Ligier fell out of favour with the then, new French government. He was promised plenty of support from the French industry, some state-owned, etc... Some sponsorship never materialised and he was let down by his backers. He lost SEITA (tobacco company), Peugeot and more. Alain Prost prefered to call the receivers than fight against the odds. There has not been a French F1 team since.
Last year Lotus was still using a Renault engine. But anyway, Lotus is own by an edge-fund from Luxemburg, so I am not surprised by the use of French language. Probably some of the staff is French-speaking from the days the team was fully Renault-owned.
I was in the Paddock club with Lotus as well. Fleur Foster was our host - along with Charlie - who was the person in charge - short dark haired slightly nasty & Very french.... anyway i got chummy with Fleur - and she said you have to be able to speak both english and French ( at least) fo work with lotus. Gian Carlo ( italian ) was the garage host ( tall, bearded guy-) they were all super nice ... I think that Renault buying Lotus ? would be good if they bought the car company as well! if They do buy it - i hope the Lotus name can continue elswhere.
I'd be happy to see Renault buy the Enstone team and change the name back to Renault. They never earned or deserved the Lotus name, it was a stupid marketing deal done by self-proclaimed marketing maestro extraordinaire, Dany Bahar, in the period when he was trying to single handedly kill Lotus the car company. The current use of the Lotus name comes with zero actual association with anything Lotus, since Bahar's Lotus never paid their sponsorship bill, but Genii settled for keeping the name for the team as it has value by association.
They should just pack up and leave, IMO. They come in, 1-3 years, complain about everything, get hundreds of jobs affected, and then they leave.
William, As a French, I don't agree with anything at all in this post, except the last sentence: here in France, nobody gives a d.mn, because there is ZERO interest for Formula One today, and frankly, "the need for a french team to be based in France", well that would have been true perhaps fifty years ago...the French do not want their team to be based in France, they do not want a Formula One team at all. If they did, then you would still have a french Grand Prix. The truth is that nobody cares here. The only reason we can see in this is that Renault has always thought that they didn't receive enough recognition for having powered the car that won the 2010 / 2011 / 2012 / 2013 Championships and that Carlos Goshn was rumored to be upset about that. Now, does buying a complete team makes sense when your engine is the worst on the grid? Rgds
Sorry, but here again, these would be politics from the Guy Ligier period, that is the seventies, certainly not the nineties. I agree with Pedro here (for once, see Pedro?): politics had actually a very small influence on the demise of Prost Grand Prix - if any at all: Prost was not suited at managing a team, to the point that he even stopped talking with Jean Alesi, who may have a lot of shortcomings, but with whom it is very difficult to get angry for more than two or three days. I have a lot respect for Alain Prost as a driver, but he should not have suggested that politics have anything to do with the fall of Prost Grand Prix, this was a poor excuse because the truth was that he was ill-suited to the task since day one. Rgds
Respectfully, I think you are minsinformed. It's President Mitterand himself who helped his great friend Guy Ligier in arranging several sponsorship deals from French state owned companies to support the team - SEITA and Francaise des Jeux in particular. When Mitterand left office in 1995, Guy Ligier had lost his main supporter. The new administration at the Elysee Palace, didn't want to maintain state support for someone considered a political opponent. 1996 was the last year Ligier operated as a team, until the money ran dry at the end of the year. Without sponsorship for the following year, Ligier decided to sell. Prost, one of President Chirac's favourites, was offered the team under very good terms and with promises that state support would resume. Even Peugeot got involved, providing engines for free. The facts are that most of the sponsorship never materialised or stopped rapidely, leaving Prost GP in deficit. Peugeot itself pulled out after a few years and Prost had to buy Ferrari engines to run his cars. Prost was spending most of his time chasing sponsors than running his team. In the end, he just called it a day.
I think the big difference between the French and the Brits (or the Anglo-Saxons, perhaps) is that the French are only interested in a sport if they are winning, or have one of their sportman at the top. It was the same when France had a good boxer, France was mad about boxing in the 70s, then France had good navigators, and france was pasionate about sailing, or when France had good cyclists and everyone supported Hinault and cycling, etc... only for the interest to fade away one the stars retire from the sport. When Prost was collecting WDCs, France was behind him. French newspapers were full of Prost, and other French drivers in F1 (7 at one time!). Arnoux, Pironi, Tambay were also big news. Now that there is no French driver within chance of the title, they don't care about F1 anymore. That's the difference with us Brits: we continue our support for a sport we like, through good and bad, through the lean years, etc... As for Renault, one wonders why they keep buying up teams to set up as Renault, and quickly resell them at the first occasion? Of course, you receive less recognition if you are an engine supplier instead of a team; even Merdeces understood that !
So Renault's new engine is something of a disaster ... and the solution to that is to purchase and run an entire team? Makes no sense at all to me. BTW, being French they wouldn't even have a home GP at which they could promote the road cars.
Any company will make a dud engine from time to time. Just ask Ferrari ! Or Porsche (V12 on the Footwork). Or Aston Martin. Since when GP were necessarily promoting road cars? What road cars Bahrain produces?
William, Don’t tell me you believe such fairytale, please: this is information for eight years kids at best. That story would only be believed by somebody who has no idea of how this country works; it could have been possible in the fifties, perhaps, but not in the nineties. It is too easy to believe that in France everything is politics: it only serves as a convenient excuse for the failings of an individual: but the failing of Prost Grand Prix was first and foremost caused by Prost himself. Besides, you get somewhat confused in the dates… The deal between Ligier and SEITA – for Formula One - dates back to 1975, six years before Mitterrand came into power (but even before 1975, for endurance races, etc…. The writing for that sponsorship was on the wall on January 11th, 1991, with the implementation of the “Loi Evin”, the only question after this law being the exact date when that sponsorship would have to stop completely. Therefore, Mitterrand has nothing to do with that support, which was decided well before he came into power, and invalided by a law against cigarette sponsorship, voted under his second term. You could only accuse Mitterrand of having made the law that stopped the sponsorship possible... Furthermore, remember also that in 1997, the elections had brought back the left (socialists) to power, with a socialist prime minister (Lionel Jospin) and a socialist government; even if Chirac was still President, he has no control any more on politics, so if Ligier really had had any influence on politics, he could have used it freely again in 1997. That he didn’t is easy to explain: he was not the owner of the team any more, this since 1992. Ligier did not sell the team to Flavio Briatore in 1997, but already in 1992: he sold the controlling stake to Flavio that year (1992), and the rest progressively during the years after. Flavio was interested in the Renault engine deal. Although it is true that Mitterrand and Ligier knew each other, this due to Mitterrand been elected député de la Nièvre for a succession of terms, Ligier was NEVER seen as a political opponent by the Chirac administration: he was seen as a “has been” old rugbyman that has created a Formula One team, has had some success at the end of the seventies, but has been since rather a subject of mockery with all these “années de transition”, as he called each successive disappointing season; and has pulled the plug and sold the team to Flavio Briatore in 1992. So there never was any hostility towards him: in 1995, nobody paid attention to him anymore, if anybody had ever paid attention to him one day: he was not the owner of the team at this time. And he was also a man known to enjoy life and a good dinner or two (or three…, which would certainly have pleased Jacques Chirac, who never was very strict towards political allegiance, true or supposed (the nature of Chirac own allegiance is still debated to this day, a lot of people considering that his acts and behavior show that he was in fact very close to the old “Radical-Socialists”, that is to say “center left”; but this would be another discussion to be held in P & R… Prost had some support from Chirac, that is true, but not much; besides, after the return of the left to power in the spring of 1997, that support would not have been really helpful. First and foremost, Prost misjudged completely one very important element, which was the change of CEO at Peugeot on October 1st, 1997, when Jean-Martin Folz succeeded Jacques Calvet. Folz never supported Formula One, never believed it had any use for his company, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was Prost’s habits to complain too much about the engine: Folz took advantage of this to stop Peugeot’s involvement in Formula One completely: politics had nothing to do with that. (At this time, the State has no say at all in the running of the Peugeot company) Excusing his failings by politics is rather convenient for Prost; the truth was, he was not tailored to the job, and his habits of always complaining that bad results being the fault of someone else, plus the lack of said results led the sponsors to flee away. Politics has very few to do with the demise of Prost Grand Prix, if anything to do at all: a great driver doesn’t always make a good team manager. Rgds
Again I disagree William: Prost was never really popular here BECAUSE HE WON TOO MUCH. Just to show you that you are misjudging the French, please remember that Raymond Poulidor, who never won the Tour de France, was still is immensely popular, but Jacques Anquetil, who won five, never was. In a lot of situations, the French will always prefer a beautiful looser to a winner (And BTW, France is still passionate about sailing .) If you ask me, I would swear that Senna was more popular than Prost was here. The intentions of Carlos Ghosn (who is in fact of Lebanese/Brasilian/Nigerian/French origins) towards Renaults involvement in Formula one are nebulous to say the least. The only clue is that he said recently that he wants Renault to rebuilt its brand. As for a Formula One team, according to most sources, the preferred option at Renault would have been, by far, buying Toro Rosso, but that team is based in Italy, so not in the country of parts providers, etc.. For the sake of me, I cant see any logic at all for the brands reputation in buying the Lotus team (between brackets because it has nothing to do with Colin Chapmans Team Lotus, the one and only) which, even with the best engine on the grid, is not performing well? How could Renault image benefits from their engine of today bolted to a Lotus chassis? This doesnt seem to make any sense at all. And there are still people supporting Formula One here but not enough for a French Grand prix to return. Rgds
It is unfortunately the case, still now. In France, the "patronage" in sport, or in the arts is based on political allegiance. I could quote many examples. You shouldn't assume that I don't know France. I know France very well; my mother was French and I am fluent in French too. I lived there for 14 years until Mitterand became president Although I left France 36 years ago, I am still very much aware of what happens, through frequent trips there and through the French media I follow regularly.
