Red Bull. should they stay or should they go?

Renault are merely a sub-supplier?

RBR made their system integration work with the help of Renault. The engine is so key (as we're seeing know) that if Renault weren't able to meet RBR's demands then the whole car concept would have failed. Only RB and Renault got the blown exhaust thing to work properly. Despite all this, Renault got sod all credit.

 

The engine is never unimportant, but obviously more so today than back then. RB weren't the only team with the Renault engine, no-one else made it work. It's a myopic media view to suggest Renault are particularly hard done, especially considering the part their own media strategy played in minimising their contribution, a fact they have since acknowledged.

Name the company that worked with Red Bull to develop the carbon lay up to allow facilitate the flexi wing? What about the companies that worked on integrating the KERS and gearbox together with Red Bull? Renault got a lot more credit than a number of other very significant contributors.

 

At a guess Red Bull themselves would not want the flexibility of their wings brought to the attention of the FIA. Must admit I was always surprised that the engine was branded 'Infinity' and not Renault. Huge error in missing the publicity by Renault, then again there was lots of money involved, so maybe that was why.

Great bit of ingenuity, read the rules and design parts that comply to the letter but give you the properties you want.

We need more ingenuity in F1.

 

This was my point, the FIA was all over the flexi wings and the blown diffuser to try and limit the potential. Obviously it wasn't good for RedBull or it's suppliers to shout about what they were doing, but we heard far more about Renault than any of the others. Somehow however, the simplistic view is Renault, specifically, didn't get enough credit.

 

This is a decent point. I wouldn't say Red Bull had any obligation to promote these companies, they're merely paying for a service or product. It was Renault's responsibility to market their success during this period and they didn't. Turning it around you never heard Renault praising Red Bull for giving them a championship winning chassis. You never hear Mercedes blowing smoke up Petronas's arse for the fuels they supply (apart from Rosberg's cringey performance in Malaysia last year), or Renault praising Total when they were winning. I'd say Red Bull did enough for Renault by winning the championships in the first place, it's Renault's fault they made no effort to capitalise on that commercially.

 

And yet they threw Renault under the bus the second it all went wrong.

It's the public slating they have done which is wrong. Sure maybe have a bit of a grumble, and properly vent your anger behind closed doors, but to air so much dirty laundry in public is shameful.

If Renault continue to supply them after everything they have said, they should be ****ing grateful for it.

 

I suppose it depends whether the behind the scenes discussions ended with Renault saying tough?

 

If you buy something and it's rubbish, I think you have a right to complain. It's not like they're telling anybody anything that isn't obvious. We can all see its, slow, unreliable and generally embarrassing.

McLaren have been quieter, but they are being paid to run and develop the Honda. Alonso hasn't always been so reserved though. Teams have hammered tyre and brakes suppliers in the past. I'll concur that this might be a voiciferous example, but equally I can't recollect such a sustained period of poor performance by a major supplier in F1 before.

 

Yes, if you buy something from Argos and it's no good then you take it back. When you're dealing with a multi-billion sport, large sponsors, massive public exposure etc etc, a little bit of professionalism is required.

 

I think part of the problem was that no one was allowed to develop a PU in a track mule. So first year Renault sort of had reasons why their PU was very poor.
I feel the real issue came about due to the speed of development/redesign for reliability by Renault. Red Bull have always had the resources to turn things round fast but Renault is huge organisation and I guess the accountants wouldn't give the Renault Engineers the time/money to sort out the faults. So the problems were not resolved in a timely manner or even potential solutions were not even tried as Renault wouldn't invest more money in the PU. As time wore on Red Bull tried to throw money (coders and engine experts) at Renault but Renault were worried about IP so would not fully co operate with outsiders. This left Red Bull with only 1 tactic left, public humiliation of Renault to bully them into development. That had the opposite effect and Renault hatched a plan of their own. Buy a team at a knock down price and supply only that team with the works PU.

All the above is just my opinions and thoughts.

I was feeling like Red Bull brought this all onto themselves but in hindsight I feel they were backed into a corner by Renault underfunding their PU development.

I would like to see Red Bull develop their own engine and sell it to customers below the price of Merc, Ferrari, and Renault.

Roll on 2016.

 

If I bought a Fleet of Renault Masters, and they broke down regularly, didn't perform as expected and Renault failed to fix them and insisted I kept them till the end of my contract you can be certain I'd be publicising it and trying to shame them into a different behaviour, no matter the size of my business. Obviously in the real world,
I'd by protected by consumer law and wouldn't need to, but if that didn't exist what other option would I have? I'd be forced to do something before my competitors put me out of business.

You ignored all my examples of equivalent behaviours in F1. Do you work for Renault or something, your defence of them is unsubtantiated and irrational?

 

No my defence of them is they won 4 straight WDC and WCC's as part of the RBR set-up, which apparently means nothing. Rather than RBR try and be supportive, they have slagged Renault off at any given opportunity, even when they were winning all those WDC's. The second anything went wrong that was to do with Renualt they let the world know it was their fault entirely/ No 'as a team we'll sort it out', nope, just blame Renault.

Irrational? oh please, sorry I have an opinion that is different to your own. Maybe my thoughts on RBR in general is skewed by the people who have run that team and their general attitude to the sport and their fellow competitors. Would be a shame from a competition point of view if they did leave F1, but their general attitude can certainly depart the F1 paddock.

 

Why does your opinion need to be the same as mine to be rational? Differing opinions can be rational as long as they are logically reasoned.

If you think that F1 and its fans should suffer years of non-competition, potentially lose two teams, put 600 people or so out of work all because a few people at the top of one company "deserve it" for past misdeeds, I'm ok with that, but as I can't ever see me being able to understand it, I think it best we leave it there...

 

skewed by the fact a kid like Vettel beat Hamilton 4 years in a row is more like it.

 

This made me chuckle and thought it might as well go in this thread.

 

Lol is it possible to agree with you both? Because I do.

 

Have Red Bull come up with a solution yet?

 

....and on the topic of engines.



Is there a suspicion?

 

That's a bit out of the blue...


I sense an FIA 'find' that by coincidence narrows the gap between engine suppliers...

 

Not a suspicion but maybe retribution. FIA and Bernie wanted cost cap on engines or independent engines. Merc, Ferrari and co effectively stopped that so now FIA and Bernie get revenge!!!!!!!