Volkswagen close to buying Red Bull!!!!

Just read on BBC, OK so it is from Eddie,http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/34297046 but he did get Lewis move correct. Looks like VW is buying Red Bull using Ferrari engines till 2018 while they develop their own engine.

Big question is will it be Skoda Red Bull, VW Red Bull, Audi Red Bull etc?????

I do hope this is true, mind you would have been better if VW had bought Manor and spent 2 years learning to develop the car and bring them to the a competitive team. But another engine manufacturer is great, mind you Renault might well not be round.

 

Eddie spouts a lot of nonsense predictions on TV, but when the BBC have decided to run the story as news what he's said it's tended to be correct. Not just with Hamilton, but Schumacher's return as well.

I'm inclined to believe it and it's very exciting if we do get another big manufacture. Audi would seem the inevitable choice for their chosen brand. Personally though i'd love them opt for Lamborghini and try to goad a Ferrari rivalry.

 

My thoughts exactly. It would be nice if they ran with one of their high performance brands but there's very little marketing value in that. I'd prefer them to go with VW as Porsche and Audi are already in WEC. F1 doesn't really suit Audi in my opinion, I always associate their racing teams with Quattro which they're not going to be able to run in F1. Great to have another manufacturer on board though, and because they're buying an outfit with championship winning pedigree they're more likely to go the way of Mercedes than BMW or Toyota.

Disagree with the above suggestion that it would've been better if they bought Manor. Their facilities are woefully inadequate for what VW hope to achieve, they would've just scrapped everything and started again. What's the point? They'd be paying for a name they're not going to use, assuming any debt the team has and it would cost money to dismantle their premises. They'd have been better starting up from scratch like Toyota did. Buying Red Bull gives them world class facilities, some of the best engineers in the business, and they'll presumably take on Red Bull's historic payments as championship winning manufacturer. It was a no-brainer.

 

It is just a collection of snippets that we've heard over the last year.

 

Good news IMHO. Even better if it means no more toys out of pram Horner!!!!!

I think what makes this believable, is the ousting of Piech.

 

I'd quite like to see them use Bentley,.

 

Perhaps they'll change brand as they get better?

Skoda in the first year when they'll be slow, VW in the 2nd year when they'll be perfectly average, Audi/Porsche when they think they're going to actually win a WDC and want to crow about it at great lengths to everyone else!?

 

I think the sport needs this.

 

What happens with toro rosso? Do they buy them too? In which case will they be two separate VW brands?

 

Interesting. If VW do buy just Red Bull then Toro Rosso will need so changes as they won't get support from VW like they do RedBull.

 

And.... VW have been found cheating road car emission rules.

Come here you...Welcome to F1!

 

Not cheating, they just read the rules differently........... Nobody cheats in F1.

 

BBC highlights show on now. Interesting piece from Eddie. Saying that VW are buying RedBull in 2018. And will have Red Bull sponsor at $60 mill and Stefano DoMenicali as Team principal with Gerhard Berger.
Manor to use Merc engines so they can use it as feeder team plus technology transfer from Williams to Manor.
All very interesting if it is true.

 

I'm not sure what to make of Eddie's post-quali comments. Initially I thought that because the amount of events that seem to cascade from VW buying Red Bull, so many people must know about it if all Eddie says is true, and if that was the case it would be the worst kept secret in F1 and would've broken long before now. Just a couple of days ago Autosport were saying Red Bull's participation next season was in doubt. And I assumed that Red Bull and VW must be in advanced talks and everything else is just conjecture. But then Horner did say after qualifying that he found it strange that Mercedes would rather supply engines to Manor than Red Bull, so maybe that part is true. And Rossi to Manor has already been confirmed (although we don't know if Eddie called that before or after it happened), and I also fail to see how putting Alex Rossi in a Manor is going to enhance Mercedes' reputation stateside.

If Mercedes rate Wehrlein so highly (which I can see no justification for seeing that he's been out of single seaters for three seasons now) they should've had him in GP2 the last couple of years and then replaced Rosberg with him.

It's understandable that Audi would want to bring their own man in, but it seems strange they'd replace Horner with Domenicali, love him or hate Horner's a far better team principle in every way apart from PR, surely they wouldn't value that over results.

 

I disagree, imho Dominicali is a very good team boss. Also a man with very high moral standards.

 

Don't be too eager or excited to see another manufacturer enter F1. They inevitably get bored when they fail and the reality of the budgets hit. Then they leave the sport leaving the team in utter ruin.

 

I'm surprised RBR ever thought they'd get a Mercedes engine, there was no chance, Newey aero + merc engine = dominant RBR. We all know Mercedes 'racing philosophy' is PR BS. Ferrari can see the possibility of a WCC

What makes you think they'll be slow? They are further along the Hybrid route than the others, who do you think Mercedes stole their 'original' design from?

 

So they reckon VW will be fined $18bn for the emission scandal. Could that have a knock on effect for their F1 plans? You could run a top f1 team on that for a few years. Is it the right time for them?

 

You could run a team for over 20 years on a budget like that!

 

Maybe in some strange way VW could use F1 as a tool to promote their fuel economy technology
In some strange way F1 might help VW rebuild their image in the US.
Then again that's probably just PR BS........

Interestingly German Gov are saying they are relying on US to see if VW are doing same emissions fiddle in Europe!!! EU should carry out it's own investigation, mind you this is, the EU leader, Germany we are talking about