Infiniti Red Bull Racing 2015

[FW17]

TW meeting happened before NL meeting with DM

TW brought in some imaginary condition of Renault having to be a signatory in a Merc RB deal. And some other marketing stuff.

NL meets DM, DM agrees to everything. The length of contract was also for 5 years so there was no Audi factor in it.

It was with this understanding that Renault was let go.

Now NL has to deliver, which he couldn't because if TW.

[FoxHound]

Whats damning, is that RBR has been dead silent on these comments from Wolff.

Also, Mercedes have been upfront about the discussions. They admit the possibility of Red Bull beating them, but if it was working as a symbiotic relationship Mercedes HQ could stomach that for returns elsewhere ie the marketing platforms, car schemes etc.
In the end it would still have been a Mercedes engine winning for the marque, which they found perfectly acceptable for almost 2 decades with McLaren.
What I found astounding about this, was there was good potential to do a deal a few months ago.

As for talks being public or not, when did this ever stop Red Bull? They can publicly call out Renault for their "crap" engines, ridicule Ferrari and Mercedes for "refusal to supply", flatly refuse Honda engines as "uncompetitive", and a wreak shitstorm of publicity that suits their needs.
The silence is out of kilter for Red Bull, and therefore as Dan suggests, damning.

[dans79]

TW meeting happened before NL meeting with DM

TW brought in some imaginary condition of Renault having to be a signatory in a Merc RB deal. And some other marketing stuff.

NL meets DM, DM agrees to everything. The length of contract was also for 5 years so there was no Audi factor in it.

It was with this understanding that Renault was let go.

Now NL has to deliver, which he couldn't because if TW.

sources?

[FoxHound]

TW meeting happened before NL meeting with DM

TW brought in some imaginary condition of Renault having to be a signatory in a Merc RB deal. And some other marketing stuff.

Imaginary?
To displace an industrial partner(Damiler/Renault alliance), by breaking contracts, is not imaginary.

NL meets DM, DM agrees to everything. The length of contract was also for 5 years so there was no Audi factor in it. It was with this understanding that Renault was let go..

Can you source any material to back this up please?

[alexx_88]

Look, there's obviously no logical reason for which Red Bull would inquire about a Merc PU, forfeit their deal with Renault and then not follow up. If there's no logical reason, it means that things are much more complicated than "they didn't pick up the phone".

If I were to bet, I'd say that Mercedes asked for a serious marketing commitment from RB, something that DM or Horner deemed as being too much in the way of their own marketing efforts. So they've decided to wait it out, knowing that the person most interested for them to be in F1 also has the most power: Bernie. That also explains why there's no reaction from RB concerning the talks with Mercedes/Ferrari. They are still hoping that one of the top PU manufacturers will be forced to supply them on better terms than originally suggested by Mercedes.

@FoxHound: Mercedes had no problem with another team winning with their engines for two very big reasons:
1. They were not in F1 at the time, not winning everything and not appearing as the best brand in terms of engineering.
2. The engines they were supplying didn't cost half a billion to produce.

[ME4ME]

Motorsport.com had a great analysis on the meetings that took place between Lauda and Mateschitz

Certainly worth to read:
http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/analy ... %5D=19&s=1

[dans79]

The silence is out of kilter for Red Bull, and therefore as Dan suggests, damning.

Exactly,

RBR has been going on and on and on about how they are doing everything they can, but are being blocked. Now one of the supposed people blocking them publicly announces we would have supplied them engines, but we had 2 requirements before we started talking seriously about it, and they didn't follow through.

If Wolff had lied or embellished you would expect to hear something from rbr, but instead all we hear are crickets.

[FW17]

Motorsport.com had a great analysis on the meetings that took place between Lauda and Mateschitz

Certainly worth to read:
http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/analy ... %5D=19&s=1

Yeah same source but i think it was titled differently the previous day

[FW17]

The silence is out of kilter for Red Bull, and therefore as Dan suggests, damning.

Exactly,

RBR has been going on and on and on about how they are doing everything they can, but are being blocked. Now one of the supposed people blocking them publicly announces we would have supplied them engines, but we had 2 requirements before we started talking seriously about it, and they didn't follow through.

If Wolff had lied or embellished you would expect to hear something from rbr, but instead all we hear are crickets.

Marketing discussion of Merc cannot be done by the F1 guys

DM - NL meeting this was discussed and said to become a separate contract and rightly so. An F1 engine contract is about 20 million a year while the marketing synergy would be lot more expensive and impact be far greater.

And DM being a marketing man would have obviously would have liked to be more interested in talking about the partnership with someone more intelligent than NL about marketing.

[FW17]

TW meeting happened before NL meeting with DM

TW brought in some imaginary condition of Renault having to be a signatory in a Merc RB deal. And some other marketing stuff.

Imaginary?
To displace an industrial partner(Damiler/Renault alliance), by breaking contracts, is not imaginary.

This was a barrier authored by TW. Nobody else in Damiler/Renault alliance would have been bothered about it. Renault legally cannot block a deal as it would be anti-competitive.

[dans79]

Marketing discussion of Merc cannot be done by the F1 guys

DM - NL meeting this was discussed and said to become a separate contract and rightly so. An F1 engine contract is about 20 million a year while the marketing synergy would be lot more expensive and impact be far greater.

It does not say they agreed to separate contracts, only that DM wanted them separate. Just because he wanted it doesn't mean he was going to get it.

And DM being a marketing man would have obviously would have liked to be more interested in talking about the partnership with someone more intelligent than NL about marketing.

The marketing aspect was of such immediate interest to Stuttgart that its top executive in that field, board member Ola Kallenius, was ready to meet with Horner.

However, heading into F1's summer break, things lost momentum. Mateschitz was on holiday, and so too were key Mercedes people. For some reason, the Kallenius meeting didn't take place.

so again, RBR didn't follow through. For someone who was in such desperate need of an engine they didn't try very hard. I've worked on deals close to this scale, If potential customers are serious, they don't let stuff slip, they are making calls, following up, rescheduling meetings, constantly doing everything possible to make it go through.

[dans79]

This was a barrier authored by TW. Nobody else in Damiler/Renault alliance would have been bothered about it. Renault legally cannot block a deal as it would be anti-competitive.

who said Renault would block the deal? The only thing that said was that Merc needed the ok from Renault to get started on a deal with RBR. They didn't even say the RBR Renault contract needed to be canceled. Also do you know what the Renault/Merc contracts look like? do you know for a fact that they didn't have any kind of conflict of interest or no compete type clauses in them?

[zeph]

You do know that most of these talks are held behind closed doors right? Just because you don't read about it in the gossip press doesn't mean they didn't happen or with the people you are closely following. No doubt, we will probably know at some point what happened, but I'm a bit baffled about how RBR's silent is damning. It's not as if their talks are public nature.

I think what Dan means is that RBR are not silent about anything else. They put out the dirty laundry for all to see. So if Wolff was fibbing, surely someone would have denounced it? The fact that they haven't speaks volumes.

[FoxHound]

who said Renault would block the deal? The only thing that said was that Merc needed the ok from Renault to get started on a deal with RBR. They didn't even say the RBR Renault contract needed to be canceled. Also do you know what the Renault/Merc contracts look like? do you know for a fact that they didn't have any kind of conflict of interest or no compete type clauses in them?

To look at it in the working context....imagine Renault are actually doing something well or novel in the PU dept(but it requires more testing/investment/time), Red Bull are privy to this(information), and they break contract to get the supply of a "competitive" engine.
The "competitive" engine supplier could be passed this information, free of charge, thus anti-competitive.

From Red Bull and Renault we had the whole spiel regarding de-facto manufacturer team...I do wonder the level of info transfer betwixt the two.

[djos]

Nothing out of line, of for that matter new in that SpeedWeek article if you'd ask me.
All well known pointers by now:

- Mercedes and Ferrari don't want to supply
- Honda deal blocked by Ron Dennis
- Red Bull disappointed by Renaults performance, reliability and willingness to improve
- No decent options left for Red Bull
- Red Bulls competitiveness a motivation for Merc/Ferrari not to supply them
- Honda possibly a step back over the current Renault (which many forum users so sarcastically pointed out earlier)

Situation is a mess, but not a totally inaccurate assessment from D.M.

I think the only way to go for Red Bull right now is to take a unbranded Renault PU for the 2016 season as an intermediate option, accept 2016 is a write-off, and fully focus on 2017 with whatever engine Bernie comes up with.

Nailed it mate, and very succinctly put too!