Update: Renault officially delays F1 decision
November 5, 2009 by SJ Skid
Filed under Prime & Option, SJ Skid, Top Story
Despite Renault managing director Jean-François Caubet’s insistence that the team will remain in Formula 1, the official line is this: We haven’t decided.
Reuters has the word from a higher source than Caubet — Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn.
Here’s the Reuters report:
PARIS, Nov 5 (Reuters) – French carmaker Renault (RENA.PA) said on Thursday it would decide by the end of the year whether to stay in Formula 1 following Toyota’s exit from the sport.
“You will have to be patient,” Renault Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn told reporters. “We will make an announcement on our participation in Formula 1 before the end of the year.”
Toyota announced on Wednesday it was quitting the sport, less than a year after Japanese rivals Honda pulled out and only days since BMW ran its last race.
Sole tyre supplier Bridgestone has also said it will leave at the end of 2010.
Renault won the 2005 and 2006 championships with Fernando Alonso but the Spaniard has now left for rivals Ferrari. Title sponsor ING has also departed, leaving a big hole in its budget.
If I were Robert Kubica… well, I don’t know what I would be doing now. If I were Timo Glock, I’d be calling McLaren right now.
My best sense is that Renault will sell the team and become an engine supplier for that team plus Red Bull.
Thoughts? What do you think would be Renault’s best path?
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…not good, this is not good.
It is awfully strange that so many car manufacturers have left F1 this season… My guess is that it has more to do with the fact that neither company is really selling enough cars which in the end allows them to spend such gargantuan amounts on their F1 cars. Losing Toyota is one thing (have they ever won a Grand Prix?) but to lose Renault would be a huge blow to the sport… then again losing Honda gave way for a fantastic little team called Brawn.
I agree Ben.
In a climate of declining sales and profits, amid a gloomy economic reality, the auto corporations have to make some tough decisions. From a business standpoint, even at the best of times, racing is considered a pure expense and there are very few participants that can actually operate a profit.
That being the case, when expenditures multiplied during the past 20 years, only the large manufacturers could justify the expense as advertising and marketing efforts to support their sales, when there was some growth and market share to be gained.
Clearly, that is not the case today. I expect Renault will keep their engine programme and sell the team after next season; they have always been successful as an engine supplier, and there are more teams who will need engines beyond 2010.
I agree with SR this is really, really not good. And I’m going to add to everyone’s woes…
Ferrari are right to say the FIA was waging war on the might of manufacturers and that Moseley or MaxTodt as it now is are going to pursue this tactic. Problem is, they may be getting more ammunition from the media and car sale’s failures.
1. Chrysler sales are down 33%. Why does that matter? Fiat and their deal to buy in to the US market. Fiat = Ferrari.
2. Magna (and Russian bank Sberbank) was going to buy Opel, GM has reneged (there is a strike going on there now in protest). Magna already said it was going to “enter the real world of car marketing, including all levels of motorsport”. I know that Opel were already asking Magna to consider hiring some of the BMW people (and presumably Toyota people). What for? A sports program. Opel has a long tradition of racing (that GM has allowed to go dusty).
GM’s response for Opel? Firing 10,000 people this month.
All this will help bolster MaxTodt’s positon that there is an economic downturn which has forced Toyota, BMW and Bridgestone’s hand. Truth is, that is partly right. What is never mentioned is KERS, no KERS, this wing, that wing, this tire, that tire, this bargeboard, that bargeboard, and so on. That, by Autosport’s estimate was 100 million per team ove rthe past two years, not to mention Bridgestone’s R&D costs.
One good thing about MaxTodt, he saw real $ figures at Ferrari for all these changes. Now, let’s see if he can be honest and fess up for the FIA’s role in wasting funds and driving people out of business.
Come to think of it, Peter Windsor and Mr Anderson, what are you going to do for 2011 when they change specs all over again? With new tires, your $$ funding goose is cooked. Get out while you can.
Toyota actually got it right with the double diffuser this season. They didn’t have to scramble and spend more money to redevelop their chassis. Plus, Toyota never ran KERS. In other words, their 2009 budget was not impacted by the two most technical controversies of ’09. So how can their departure be blamed on unnecessary development costs?
Honda left F1 before these controversies took hold. The team briefly ran their mechanical flywheel KERS in testing. But as we all know, the Brawn was designed specifically to not run KERS. This is part of the reason why the car was so good aero-wise.
BMW fully embraced KERS. To say they were chased away because of unnecessary KERS development costs ignores the fact that they were the only team to not veto KERS early in the season. True, dumping KERS and adding a double diffuser must have cost the team a fortune, but by then BMW had already decided to quit.
Renault is the only team that is hurting financially that also objected to and was negatively impacted by KERS and the double diffuser. They are the only team where the evidence points directly to causing them to consider leaving because of the knee-jerk rules changes by the FIA.
I just don’t buy the argument that Honda, Toyota, and BMW left because the technical regulations chased them away. Perhaps these factors played a role, but they cannot be blamed entirely.
But JD you are looking at one year… and in that year were also:
Slick tires – Front wing (below driver’s vision), reduced rear wing (meaning redesign of rear suspension), and on and on. Now if you go back to the last 4 years of Max’s edicts… check out the list! Oh, and let’s not forget no rev limit, then 18,000 rev limit…
Yes, however, these rules changes were known pretty far in advance. Michael Schumacher tested a 2009 downforce level car prior to the 2008 season. If manufacturers were to bail, shouldn’t they have done so prior to pouring all that money down the drain in 2009?
And Toyota were huge spenders in F1 every year they competed. It began with their ill-fated V12 in 2000. If anything, having to build a V10 from scratch in less than a year after the FIA scratched the V12 should have been warning enough nine years ago.
And don’t forget that these corporations, like Toyota, Honda, and BMW, can give as hard as they can get when it comes to politics. This is not a little guy-big guy fight. It’s bigs versus bigs.
Budgets were huge prior to all the rules changes. There have been tire changes and new areo regs throughout all this time, maybe nothing as drastic as slicks and 2009 aero. But manufacturers willingly spent millions on minute improvements in reaction to technical regulation changes.
There is nothing wrong with manufacturers being “merely” engine suppliers. Remember two of the iconic names of the past: Williams-Renault and Benetton-Renault. Also, it was Lotus-Renault that gave Ayrton Senna his first four victories in F1.
Taking the entirety of running an F1 team is an enormous task, especially for a large corporation. F1 is all about the organization being agile and able to make decisions and changes quickly. Corporations are the opposite.
Building and supplying engines is a somewhat different task compared to running the entire team. Especially with the engine freeze, it seems that F1 engine development is probably more compatible with corporations than developing the whole package.
Toleman/Benetton was successful prior to Renault taking it over. If the team’s future can be ensured, then having an independent team supplied by Renault engines is still a pretty good setup. Renault can fund the team for a year (like Honda did with Brawn) and simply supply engines to that team plus Red Bull.
I agree with JD… but as a sporting franchise, F1 needs to decide what its image is going to be:
1. That of a sport where dominant auto manufacturers come to compete and show off their new technologies.
2. A mix of independent teams i.e. Force India, Williams or Red Bull that are far smaller in capital infrastructure.
As interesting as it is to have small indy teams compete with bigger ones, it creates an uneven playing field that for some is just insurmountable.
Yes, Brawn and Red Bull were the dominant teams this season – but Brawn was bankrolled by Honda and Red Bull, well let’s just say they had a fantastic season that until now was unprecedented.
To make a long story short, budgets should be capped for every single team, which in the end would eliminate such high turn around each and every season.
Ben, I’d add to your comments something that always nags at me:
Should Red Bull really be considered a “privateer”? There is so much money there, from the drink sales and the company but also the whole Red Bull sport marketing arm, that I tend to think they may actually be the “biggest boy” on the block.
I like your breakdown of the “image.” Makes sense.
I completely disagree with capping budgets… this ain’t communist Russia or China. This is the premier technology development motorsport. If you cap the budgets (or seek to hamper budgets with stopping testing) you may think you are being egalitarian, but you’ll create NASCAR all over again. I, for one, am not an idiot wanting to see the “show” every week with identical cars only painted to look different.
Want to make F1 affordable? Write 5 year specs… allow car developers to push against a fixed 5 year envelope. They can budget accordingly, they can plan PR accordingly, they can discover who the great drivers really are.
I agree that there should not be budget caps. However, with unlimited spending we must be willing to accept less stability. Greater spending means greater financial risk. When things are going well, manufacturers spend; and when things are going bad, they retreat.
You can’t have unlimited spending and relative stability. Business and financial cycles won’t allow it.
I’ll agree that are there are two clear arguments for both sides on the budgeting issue… and yes i’ll totally concede that NASCAR is the most boring form of motorsport around.
However Peter, isn’t writing a 5 year spec a cap restriction in and of itself? Forcing teams to commit to a standard that lays out a fair playing field is what i’m arguing. I personally think that the KERS/Double Diffuser endeavors, as interesting as they were, were just inappropriate and clashed with the Formula 1 standard. Fisichella would have won Spa this year if it weren’t for Raikonen having KERS equipped in his Ferrari. The name “Formula 1″ is the nomenclature for a specific set of rules and standards – I think it’s fair to say that there are more differences amongst the paddocks than there are similarities, which again undermine the very nature of competition.