You have to take your hat off to Red Bull. They are having fun despite the current engine frolics. It is clear that the engine next year will be a Renault V6, but what will it be called? Well, if you look at this morning’s Red Bull message one might conclude that it will be a Red Bull-TAG-Heuer (see the following article a few days ago). Having said that, it could just be playing around with everyone: Mario Illien is Swiss.
Presumably it will run like clockwork…
(By the way, TAG-Heuer and TAG are now different companies. TAG engines were used by McLaren in the 1980s, but Techniques d’Avant Garde (TAG) sold TAG-Heuer to Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) in 1999. TAG is now mainly involved in aviation. However, TAG boss Mansour Ojjeh is currently selling his shares in McLaren and might possibly do an engine-branding deal with Red Bull to highlight that change. We will have to see…)
joeblogsf1 
Surely if the engine were to be rebadged as Tag this would conflict with the continuing Infiniti sponsorship?
Why?
The purpose of that rebadging is to silence Mr. Marko in 2016: If he constantly insults the engine in 2016, he would automatically insult their main sponsor! 😉
I thought the Infiniti sponsorship was ending anyway.
Mansour Ojjeh actually jumping ship from McLaren then, I had read that Ron Dennis was trying to buy the shares but didn’t know if it was actually happening.
Any chance the recent bad performance of McLaren was engineered to reduce the share price…….
No
Carlos Ghosn is one slow moving fat lady.
I was wondering if the ongoing ‘dispute’ between Nissan and Renault over the French Govt buying up more Nissan shares would have any effect o the Lotus buyout going ahead. The fat lady as you put it is supposed to be managing the working relationship but Nissan seem to have concerns about French intentions as far my limited understanding goes.
Yes well when one shareholder declares that his shares are worth double voting points it makes the others nervous, as the French government seemed at one point to want to take control of the alliance. (though to be fair M Holland contradicted his business minister, so now nobody knows. Nissan have denied that they are to issue more shares to dilute Renault’s holding.
Today ANE say “Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn hopes to resolve a rift in the alliance caused by the French government by Dec. 11. Talks between the government and Nissan have made “significant progress,” French media reports said. “
According to a tweet from TAG Heuer in reply to comments and reactions on the RBR tweet mentioned above there wil be a announcement tomorrow!
TAG Heuer
@dave_only Stay tuned till tomorrow to find out!
Actually i would say to all take a moment and read all the reactions… Cyrille Abiteboule also chimed in…
There you go
Presumably there will be a notice posted:
LIEBER HERR DOKTOR MARKO
DIESER MOTOR IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENMARKEN. IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS. ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
Gordon Bennett! We use to have almost exactly that notice on the wall of our computer room in the 1970s – that was when computers took up a whole room and a 20MB disk drive was a removable pack the size of a car tyre and the machine really did have flashing lights! It did not even have an O/S, just a bootstrap loader. Those were the days! IBM 1440 if anyone else ever worked on one.
Dear Joe, all
Really great article, Joe. I apologise for being negative, but, re the video of the McLaren with mudguards: think the car looks fabulous, and, the whole vid is about beautifu,really eye catching computer generated animation, BUT…..from another angle, it serves to contrast with & perhaps emphasise how the race team has been performing in 2016.
Cheers
MarkR
So the engine won’t be badged as Nissan?
I thought that when Christian Horner said that Ron Dennis wouldn’t be happy when RBR reveals their engine deal, it was meant as a swipe at Honda.
Nissan beating Honda on track (and who would doubt that in Honda’s current state) would indeed be hard to swallow for McLaren and obviously Honda …
Ron Dennis wouldn´t be happy with Nissan as well as with “TAG”, so it could be understood in both ways. :-).
But obviously it can be understood as a new jibes against their beloved engine partner. No engine on the picture, and a Swiss Mr. Illien doing all the work “to close the gap”? They can´t help doing it even now, although they wouldn´t get another engine if Renault would say “no”. Well done.
I´m really sorry, but I don´t think this is funny at all. I can´t laugh about arrogant people.
“It demonstrated the class of the chassis.”, Horner was quoted today concerning the post-Silverstone season.. So obviously a chassis is enough to be quick, the picture should tell us??
funny paradox – McLaren can’t get any title sponsor for another year now, whereas Red Bull are going to have TWO ! TAG Heuer and Infinity. Well done Red Bull ! I gues it’s now Ron’s turn to ”suck it up”
It doesn’t seem like TAG Heuer is a title sponsor though. According to Ron Dennis, McLaren’s Chandon sponsorship in comparison with their TAG Heuer deal is “…multiples more valuable than the financial situation with TAG Heuer”, so wouldn’t it seem odd for them to go from that level at McLaren to a title sponsor at Red Bull (who will surely have customer engines and could easily perform worse than McLaren next year)? Quite honestly, I don’t think anyone would be talking about this if it weren’t for TH leaving McLaren. My guess is TH will simply replace the Casio logos on the RB cars and uniforms.
As soon as the clickbait merchants like thejudge13 are declaring that a luxury watch maker owned by LVMH are about to produce the ERS components in collaboration with Red Bull to be ready to fit to a Renault ICE all for 2016 – thats when its obvious Red Bull are up to their usual PR media tricks, producing fantasies to be eagerly lapped up by less savvy observers.
Who is the judge? I don’t know him.
Essentially, a random tattler who utilises the odd contact with Red Bull as a way of gleaning the occasional fragment of truth that he throws into a sea of otherwise wild speculation and spurious garbage.
When a bunch of Saudi geezers arranged for TAG and Porsche to make an F1 engine, the relationships weren’t forever.
The firms managed different businesses. TAG, Porsche and McLaren were run by people who had their own companies.
TAG is the outsider today. TAG is on the fringe of F1.
TAG is a free agent.
They have developed a new kind of ERS which uses a giant spiral spring. Using similar mode of operation to the current KERS an idler gear is employed to engage with the 400mm dia spring wheel and so transfer kinetic energy into potential energy, which may then be released as needed by the driver.
(Pulling a small lever which allows an escapement to control the spring movement)
Just as the current ERS may be charged only in the pits before moving on to the grid so the spring may be wound by means of a large key which fits on to a square ended shaft and is accessed through a hole just behind the driver.
The new SpringERS package is specially designed to be easily replaced and the whole can be dismounted by unstrapping a large leather buckle.
I have something even more revolutionary – a Seiko ‘kinetic’ which uses an electrical KERS to store energy in a capacitor though these now seem to have been superseded but solar charged energy storage. Maybe TAG are in the right business after all!
Audi, for years, traded using the slogan “Vorsprung durch Technik” and buyers loved it. Translated into English, it meant to me, “We’re selling you a load of cobblers.”
“Swiss engineering to close the gap…” Like “Mind the gap” announcements on the London underground?
Is there any truth in the rumor that Tata-JLR is going to acquire the historic Silverstone track?
Not yet
Who would they sell Gaydon to?
For some reason I`m very excited about the future of McLaren. I love their road cars, their factory, their F1 cars and the pain they have gone through this year has made McLaren seem a bit more human than the chrome silver days. I wasnt much of a McLaren fan in the past but I`m really hoping they leap forward next year. I think their livery is fantastic as well.