Red Bull ditching Renault?

They talked briefly about this on Sky yesterday.

The rumour is they sent a letter to Renault and said they were terminating their contract (a year early). So Renault just wrote back and said along th lines of "nope. We totally disagree. You are not."

Linking this all in with the rumour that Renault are looking to buy Lotus - How long is Lotus' contract with Merc engines ? Thia partnership only started this year - so I'm guessing it was a couple of years at least ?

Well the rumours are:

1) Renault buying out Lotus
2) Audi in talks with Red Bull & Toro Rosso (To go down the Ferrari, Hass route), if this one doesn't happen they are likely to leave Renault for a Mercedes engine until they can get BMW or Audi back into the sport.
3) Sauber to switch Engine to Renault and become Renaults "test" team just like Hass and Toro Rosso

Personally the only ones I can see happening is Renault buying Lotus and Red Bull / Toro Rosso to switch to Mercedes engines.

Renault are playing hardball with Bernie. The name of the game is to continue some presence in F1 that doesnt cost more than they have spent on F1 in the last few years. Ditching RBR is to cut a huge overhead because they were supplying engines for free with near zero marketing benefit.
We already know they didnt want to spend anything near merc or ferrari on the hybrid engine, in fact they actually expected to profit from supplying to customers. That is obviously impossible with the most expensive yet flaky engine.

So they are holding Bernie to ransom - their offer to buy Lotus hinges on spreading their payment for the F1 entry and whats left of Enstone over 10 years, so they are looking to out lay less than 10 mill a year (and being able to quit again before complete payment). To actually run the firm and fund the team side they are looking for 'historic' handouts like the others + funds from Lopez + a severance payment from RBR for busting the contract.

Then we have the sponsors - Infinity is a part of the Renault/Nissan family and is expected to continue transferring its marketing budget to F1 - but no longer RBR but Renault/Lotus

Oh yeah and Renault also want a new TP/equity partner to join Lopez, along the lines of Merc with Toto/Niki

Only under these conditions, and Renault wont care where they are on the grid, as long as they are in F1, will they stay. They are not interested in outspending merc, cos they wouldn't have a prayer, so if they have their own team that has no upfront loading costs and is subsidised, they reckon their spend going forward will not greatly exceed their current situation, paying for RBR engines and receiving negative PR

They do have Bernie over a barrel because he needs more engine makers, however if he agrees to basically subsidise them to remain, the door is open, the door that Ferrari made with their special assistance handouts and we can expect Audi to try a similar tack 'we were historic Auto Union, pay us to join, RBR will pay us to build the engine, we want near zero costs because F1 is a joke'

I don't think Renault will be leaving, but it's clear that they will not supply other teams... At least until they get their shit in order. I still believe Renault will wind up being next year's black horse. They clearly have a long term plan. From what I understand, they'd have to homologate something with this year's available tokens by the end of the year so they could build upon it at the introduction of the new engine next year.

There is no in season development for the 2016 spec engine.

Nothing new there at all. Mercedes and Nissan/Renault are already collaborating and have tech partnerships and platform sharing arrangements. All car manufacturers are increasingly tying up with others in this way - a looser version of merging. It makes sense all round for 2 car makers to share something rather than both spend independently.

The part about supplying RBR is pure speculation added on top of that in the article. That speculation is along the lines of the recent Aston Martin branded Merc engines to RBR.

Merc have said they are not supplying RBR, and they wont, they dont have to, the Renault partnership is with road cars - F1 is a drop in the ocean compared to the sums on the road car side.

the clue to the bs in the article is this

meaning merc want Renault to stay in F1, and to help them stay could take over supplying their troublesome customer RBR, who Renault refuse to supply any longer

As if

There's a BBC article on the deal...

Loss of Infinity sponsorship, 30 million, Loss of Total sponsorship Unknown value, and they'll have to pay for Ferrari PUs which they were getting from Renault for free because of the Infinity sponsorship.

Potentially -70 million dollars less revenue not even talking about the reduced earnings finishing this year 4th instead of 2nd last year.

Might as well forget about RBR and STR, They're F##ked. Red Bull won't compete unless Ferrari give A-spec engines to them and Ferrari only want to hand RBR B-spec engines from what I understand, don't blame Ferrari for that otherwise they're get creamed by RBR with A-spec engines. So therefore 4 cars are gone of the grid with potentially 6 cars if Renault can't be stuffed and put more focus on something else.

Ferrari were the ones being all magnanimous offering Red Bull their engines, but not their 2016 engine. Seems like it's not just Mercedes stifling competition. Lolzers.

BlueBalls?