The future of Renault F1

Renault managing-director Patrick Pelata says that the French automobile company has not decided what will happen with its Formula 1 team, following the Singapore scandal.

“This is not the issue right now,” Pelata told French radio. “We will take our time before looking at our options.”

It has been widely assumed that Renault’s decision not to dispute the charges – a nice way of saying that the team was guilty – means that Renault intends to continue in F1 and has got rid of Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds (it is not really relevant whether they resigned or were fired, just that they have gone) in order to be able to show the FIA that it has taken action against those involved in the race-fixing scandal and hope that the FIA will be lenient towards the team, as it does not want to lose another F1 team, nor the engine suppliers which Renault provides for the Renault F1 team and for championship contenders Red Bull Racing. The number of Renault staff has been reducing in the course of the last year with aroun half the staff at Viry-Chatillon being laid off or reassigned after the F1 engine freeze in 2008. The celebrated factory has been in operation since 1969 when the old Gordini company was merged into Renault and the new facility, called the Usine Amedee Gordini, was established. It was the headquarters of the Renault Sport F1 team in the 1970s and 1980s and then switched to engine development in the late 1980s. When Renault returned to F1 with Williams in 1988 Viry-Chatillon was again at the forefront of F1 development and a string of World Championship followed until 1997 when the decision was taken to withdraw from F1 and sell the engines to sub-contractor Mecachrome. A small team of engineers at Viry-Chatillon continued to work on the development of the V10 engines with funding being provided by Mecachrome. When Renault bought the Benetton team in 2000 the activities revived again, although much of the manufacturing remained outsourced to Mecachrome, while Renault engineers did the development work. The most recent accounts (for 2008) reveal that the team made a loss of $16m. In part this was due to increased costs but the team is also thought to have suffered from a shortfall of expected sponsorship revenues because of performance clauses in the ING sponsorship. The team’s turnover was $244m, but it spent $260m. It is not clear how much of this Renault had to pay but it is clear that Renault boss Carlos Ghosn has been demanding cuts and Renault became one of the leading forces in cost-cutting this year. This year Renault has already reduced it staff at Enstone by 60 people, mostly as a result of the closing of the test team. The team has a combined staff in France and England of something like 820 people, but this is being reduced to 570 in 2010. Briatore told the Italian media earlier this year that by 2012 there would be only 200 people working at Enstone. Mecachrome also laid off 11 of its F1 staff at Aubigny earlier this year.

Reducing the staff is the fastest way for any F1 team to save money and quite a few of the Renault staff laid off this year have already been taken on by the new Manor F1 operation, which is building the cars in Bicester.

Renault has nonetheless committed to stay in F1 until the end of 2012 and although the team could be sold on to someone else (or given away, a la Brawn-Honda). The man most likely to want it is David Richards, who has alreadyn been linked with being Flavio’s replacement. I don’t see that myself. Richards has moved on from being an F1 team principal. He runs a car company now, so if he took over the team he would want it to become an Aston Martin team in a few years from now. If Renault want to ditch the team he might be a good option, but one has to ask whether there is money to run the operation in the medium term. Aston Martin is in no position to pour in cash but its Middle Eastern backers might be.. Richards has denied he is in talks with Renault about replacing Briatore. That does not mean he is not trying to get control of the team…