Renault Secures F1 Future
Renault will continue to race in F1 next year after agreeing to sell a 75% shareholding to Luxembourg-based investment firm Genii Capital, a deal which effectively secured the team’s future in the sport.
The company had considered quitting F1, but the team will continue under new owners whilst retaining a minority 25% shareholding.
The design team under technical director Bob Bell will remain the same. However Bell, who was acting team principal for the final four races of the season following the departure of Flavio Briatore in the wake of the Singapore race-fixing scandal, will be replaced by a new team boss.
Renault said it had reached an agreement for a ‘proposed sale of a large stake of the Renault F1 team to Genii’ and that they would operate the team jointly.
It is believed that Genii, run by businessmen Eric Lux and Gerard Lopez, will own 75% of Renault’s chassis design and construction base in Enstone in Oxfordshire.
Renault will retain total control over its engine manufacturing base in Viry-Chatillon on the outskirts of Paris.
Renault also said it would continue to supply engines to Red Bull in 2010.
The company felt it was not able to quit F1 having last summer signed legally binding documents committing it to the sport until 2012.
At a time of difficult global economic conditions for car companies, Renault did not want to spend the money that would be required either to extricate itself from its F1 commitments or to continue running and funding the team itself.
Renault’s decision to examine its participation in F1 came after the team’s worst season since it returned to the sport as a constructor in 2002.
They finished eighth out of 10 teams in the world championship, with their best result Alonso’s third place in the Singapore Grand Prix.
Far worse for Renault’s reputation, though, was the Singapore race-fixing scandal.
Renault were handed a ban from F1, suspended for two years, after being found guilty of asking Nelson Piquet to crash deliberately in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to aid Alonso’s chances of winning.
Team boss Flavio Briatore and engineering director Pat Symonds were banned from motorsport for their part in the conspiracy – Briatore for life and Symonds for five years.
Both are contesting their bans in the French courts, with a verdict due in the new year.
Two of the team’s major sponsors, the Dutch bank ING and the Spanish insurance company Mutua Madrilena, ended their relationship with the team with immediate effect over the affair.
