End of the Red Bull engine saga scheduled for tomorrow?

I think bernie / CVC brokered the deal and also threatned Renault / Redbull with a huge penalty if they leave. It would not suprise me that with a huge hedge fund involved in F-1 that the money people will exert all kinds of coroprate pressure to preserve their financial gain.

you want to leave - find - pay back the $400M you took over the past x number of years since you are breaking the contract ... and oh buy the way, we;re going to short your stock,,, and or put pressure on your financing to raise rates, etc... Corporate finance plays dirty when there are BILLIONS at stake. my sense is that Redbull lawyers looked at the deal they signed and said that you will owe $Xhundred of millions... to get out. same for Renault.

so when you look at it to continue seems less painful than to leave.... at least that is how I would have done it!

F-1 is this giant tangle of legal contracts ... its kind of like the guns of august... once one goes off you cant stop the others ... so better to keep them from going in the first place.

 

That is assuming that Ecclestone/CVC is bigger and stronger than Renault, and I don't think it is.

I am not saying that Renault wasn't bound by some contract clauses to fisnish the years it has subscribed to; but there was a way of doing this without penalty, by running a F1 budget very low cost, that would have in fact damaged F1 rather than Renault.

Renault was under no obligation of buying the Genii outfit, nor to spend plenty of money upgrading the engines it would have been forced to supply to Red Bull. It could have stopped development.

Let's say, Renault send the allocated number of engines (12 per team?) to Red Bull in January, but no engineers, no technical back up, and no more involvement during the rest of the year. This repeated until it is free from its contract. That would respect the letter of the contract and satisfy its obligations, but not respect the spirit of the contract. In the past, Honda played something similar to Williams with Mugen engines, if I remember correctly.

That's how I would have done.

Red Bull would have been mad about the situation, and Ecclestone would find himself in a tight spot.

 

And Renault would have ruined their reputation once and for all. Red Bull would look like they were right all along and Renault was, not only incompetent, but dishonorable.

 

What reputation?

Honda, Jaguar, BMW, Ford, Toyota have left F1, and I never heard their reputation was damaged.

F1 isn't the right environment for Renault, I maintain.
Renault isn't a "sport" brand but a popular brand; it sells mostly small practical cars cars and commercials.
Unlike Nissan (which it partly owns), Renault doesn't have a worldwide footprint; it's mostly in Europe. I guess there are no Renault sold in North America or Asia.
Its customers aren't likely to be part of the F1 audience.

Renault's motorsport traditions are in rallying and touring car racing.
That's precisely where its rivals (Peugeot and Citroen) are!

Peugeot made its reputation of rally raid, and Citroen has dominated the WRC for years.
The Dakar and rallies is what the Renault buyers follow, not F1. There isn't even a French GP anymore.

I personally think that Renault is not targeting the right audience in motorsport, and chooses the wrong series to participate.

It would make more sense from a commercial point of view to have a Nissan F1 team, than a Renault F1 team.
Nissan has bigger footprint and some sport models in its range at least.

 

Mercedes asked to have "clarified" regulation, but things like this might of made a lot more sense if you could test two different engine configurations under two different names.

 

If Ferrari homologated one power-unit configuration under it's own company name "Ferrari" for itself, and another, different power-unit configuration under the name "Alfa Romeo" or "Maserati" for the likes of Haas, and carried out parallel development on both power-units at it's Maranello factory, there could be a couple of issues:

1) Other non-Ferrari supplied teams could raise a complaint that Ferrari are circumnavigating the rules concerning homologating a single power-unit for a season and claim that they are breaching Article 12.1.1.c of the FIA's International Sporting Code:

ARTICLE 12 PENALTIES

ARTICLE 12.1 BREACH OF RULES

12.1.1.c: Any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any Competition or to the interests of motor sport generally.

They could possibly get around that issue by assembling the "non-Ferrari" power-units elsewhere, away from Maranello, but a breach of Article 12.1.1.c could still be argued.

Would it be worth the possible fallout to Ferrari? - I seriously doubt it would be!


2) A possible embarrassment for Ferrari.

Let's say Ferrari went ahead and built and developed two different power-units under two different badges (and the FIA allowed them to do it!), and it turned out that the "non-Ferrari" branded power-unit was far superior to the "Ferrari" power-unit.

As Ferrari would not be allowed to change the configuration of their "Ferrari" engine mid-season to match the "non-Ferrari" branded power-unit's configuration (that would breach the homologation rules) , their choices would be to either ditch their own engine and fit the re-badged engine to their car (Which would be slightly embarrassing but allowable under Article 8.3 of The FIA 2016 F1 Sporting Regulations, but not as easy as it first seems due to aerodynamic variations caused by the different configuration), or to leave everything as it is and accept being beaten by cars fitted with the "non-Ferrari" branded power-units (which would definitely not go down well with the bosses at Ferrari!).

Added to that is the additional cost of designing and developing two different power-units - Even for Ferrari it would not be cheap!

And then there is the fact that the two programmes could wind up giving contradictory data that results in the engineers becoming confused as to the best path to follow.

Whilst having two different power-plant programmes running at the same time under different badges may seem a clever thing to do, I suspect it could cause more headaches and issues than Ferrari would want, and so they simply wouldn't bother taking the risk.

 

7 Car Brands You Won’t See in the U.S.A. Anytime Soon


7 Car Brands You Won?t See in the U.S.A. Anytime Soon ? Auto Trends Magazine


Renault — Big in Europe and in the Americas from Mexico on south, Renault is no stranger to the U.S. market. The French automaker partnered with American Motors Corporation in 1980 and assumed controlling interest of AMC in 1983. Throughout much of the 1980s, Renault and AMC models were sold across the US until Renault sold AMC to Chrysler in 1987. Renault’s presence in the U.S. market ended in 1992 when its rebadged Eagle Premier model was dropped by Chrysler. Today, Renault and Nissan are in a strategic alliance with the latter likely keeping the former from ever showing up stateside again.



There seems to be no Renault, Peugeot or Citroen sold in North America (USA + Canada).

Renault is big in Mexico though.

Renault is big in Europe and North Africa mostly (RoW)

 

Mexico IS North America.

 

NA

 

I see you corrected yourself.

 

Here, we are taught that Mexico is Central America


From Wikipedia:


"Central America" may mean different things to various people, based upon different contexts:
• The United Nations statistical divisions for the Americas defines the region as all states of mainland North America south of the United States and specifically includes all of Mexico, but clearly this is only for statistical purposes.
• In Latin America (especially in Ibero-America) and also in Iberia, although it is agreed what Central America is, they also could consider the Americas a single continent, and Central America is considered a part of North America.[disputed – discuss]
• In Brazil, Central America comprises all countries between Mexico and Colombia, including those in the Caribbean.
• Some geographers include the Mexican states of Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán.[citation needed]
• Mexico, in whole or in part, is sometimes included by British people.
• Occasionally, regardless of correctness, the term "Central America" is used synonymously with "Middle America"


I think that we Brits have also different limits for the Europe.

The continentals put the limits of Europe at the Mediteranean Sea, the Urals and the Turkish border (including Georgia and Armenia).

We Brits put the limits of Europe at the Mediteranean Sea, the Urals and the Caucassus Mountain range (excluding Georgia and Armenia).

 

Red Bull should ban Helmut from ever talking to the press. What a ****ing idiot he is. Let him concentrate on the young drivers programme, something he is excellent in...but for the sake of humanity, gag him!

 

Pure insanity it is.

 

+1

There's good reasons he's affectionately known as 'Crazy Helmut' round here!

But, he certainly appears to have Mr M's ear, & I guess that's all that counts......

Cheers,
Ian

 

Make sure everybody in your boat is rowing and not drilling holes when you’re not looking.

 

Have you ever heard of NAFTA, the North America Free Trade Agreement between the governments of Canada, USA, and Mexico?

It would seem that Mexico itself considers Mexico to be part of North America!

 

Azerbijan, Georgia, and Armenia consider themselves parts of Europe, even Israel !!!