Prost for Renault?

[xpensive]

I just wonder how much truth it is in the stories of Alain Prost leading the Renault team?

As I recall, he didn't xactly set the world on fire when he ran the x-Ligier team in 1997-2001, did he?
Besides, he quickly made enemies with engine-supplier Peugeot, obviously forgetting they were for free.
Corrado Provera was only too happy to stop giving away his powerplants, while Prost brought the team
to finacial ruin with Ferrari-units he didn't have the money for.

[vyselegend]

Flavio will be hard to replace, because, like him or hate him, but he was bloody skilled in the managing busyness...

Both Prost and Richards are men who somehow failed to succes in F1 in the past. Richards at least had his time of good results, but indeed Prost was a total failure as a team manager.
And Richard probably have some other cats to whip for the moment, and cannot commit fully on F1 as long as he is managing Aston's LMP1 project for 2011, as well as preparing Subaru's return in WRC...

Then remains the question of who will manage the drivers? Flavio had Alonso, Webber, Kovalainen and Grosjean. Which means both current Renault drivers are left without a manager now. That was another force of Briatore that will be hard to get back: finding talents and driving them to a Renault seat. Who will get that task done now?

Also, sorry for veering a bit off topic, but the hardest one to replace isn't the team manager, but the technical director! Who the hell is going to fit in Symonds boots?!

There are people in the Singapore scandal thread that keep saying that Renault hasn't been punished... But personaly I think that team will really struggle to survive the punishment: it has lost in one shot two of the elites of F1, and both will prove very hard to replace...

[xpensive]

With Alain at the helm, who knows who might replace Symonds, perhaps he does another "Prost GP" and brings back his old friends from the eighties, John Barnard and Alan Jenkins?

[ISLAMATRON]

I second that, assholes like Flav are 120 for a dollar, Symonds will truly be hard to replace. Especially with all these new teams drawing alot from the talent pool.

[Miguel]

I second that, assholes like Flav are 120 for a dollar, Symonds will truly be hard to replace. Especially with all these new teams drawing alot from the talent pool.

This reminds me of a story Harvey Penick told in his "Little Red Book" of golf. He had a pupil who was going to face an opponent in a match play tournament. This pupil told to Penick he was sure of his win, because he saw in the driving range that his opponent had a bad swing and a bad grip. Of course, Penick's pupil lost.

If someone with a bad swing and a bad grip plays scratch golf, could it be because the defects cancel each other? If Briatore has been on the top for so long, there must be something you don't get.

I mean, Briatore put United Colours of Benneton in the map, and managed to get 4 WDC with a team without apparently any kind of Formula 1 knowledge. Maybe he's not a common asshole after all.

EDIT: It seems I'm unable to spell P-E-N-I-C-K right.

[kilcoo316]

Also, sorry for veering a bit off topic, but the hardest one to replace isn't the team manager, but the technical director! Who the hell is going to fit in Symonds boots?!

Symonds hasn't been technical director for ages.



Renault won two world championships with Bob Bell as the technical director.


Car design and build at the factory is ok. Racetrack based decision may be more questionable.

[Belatti]

No one is essential.

Actually, the change can be good for Renault, unless Prost takes one of the positions, of course

[xpensive]

I find this story so hard to believe, when it should be well known that Prost was not xactly the stand-up guy when his team went down either, among other things he was reported to be the biggest creditor for lending his name to the team, how about that?

I also recall that his relations with Renault weren't that good either, as I understand they refused to help him out after Prost GP lost the Peugeot engines.

[WhiteBlue]

Am I missing something?
September 22, 2009 by joesaward
There are all these stories knocking about that Alain Prost will lead the Renault F1 team, in place of Flavio Briatore.

How does that work? Prost was a great racing driver but when it came to running a team, he failed in spectacular fashion.

It all ended up in a right royal mess in November 2002 with the company going into receivership with debts of $30.5m. This left 193 people out of work. There was no buyer for the team, although a company called Phoenix Finance paid $2.5m to acquire the F1 entry which they hoped to transfer to a different entity, with the intention of collecting $14m of F1 TV money.

The official liquidator Cosme Rogeau thus ended up organising a series of auctions during which the assets of the team were sold off. This included 12 cars, spares, racing suits, wind tunnel models, racing equipment, trucks, tools, machinery. Even the office furniture.

It took many more months before Rogeau was able to organise a deal for the team’s wind tunnel at Magny-Cours to be handed over to two of the aerodynamicists Alexis Lapouille and Xavier Gergaud, who started a business called Aero Concept Engineering.

Some good points here by Mr. Saward, who is pretty close to French racings circles by merit of living in France.

I would add that running a business successfully needs a person to balance revenues and expenditure in such a way that the difference is positive. It appears to me that Prost neither understood profit, nor cash flow in 2002. You can have bad luck but 30 million must have been about one annual budget and that kind of hot figures are unexcusable. I would not trust the guy to run one of Flabby's ahem, clubs.

[vyselegend]

Also, sorry for veering a bit off topic, but the hardest one to replace isn't the team manager, but the technical director! Who the hell is going to fit in Symonds boots?!

Symonds hasn't been technical director for ages.



Renault won two world championships with Bob Bell as the technical director.


Car design and build at the factory is ok. Racetrack based decision may be more questionable.

Thanks for the correction. I guess Symonds' exact title was "executive director" or "trackside operations chief" or something like that.

Bell has a great palmares and sounds like a trustfull man. Maybe he's the best choice for a promotion to Symonds post, but what the team really needs now is a good strategist.

Belatti, "nobody's irreplacable", agreed, but that doesn't mean you can always found someone of the same level than the one you lost. It just means that nobody is essential by himself for the whole thing to run.

Strategy-wise, Ross Brawn and Pat Symonds were considered the top level. Brawn is obviously unavailable, so there's nobody really up the challenge to fill the void at Renault.

Busyness-wise, well, Briatore was the one hiring Schumacher, Alonso (who represent 7 of the 9 available WDC of the XXIst century). He was the origin of Benetton's success, had unnumerable contacts in the sponsoring world...
His achievments speak for themselves...

There were reasons behind Renault's huge success in F1, compared to other great efforts like Honda, Toyota or BMW. And I think a good part of those reasons were lying in those key people.

I hope the remaining ones (Bell, Nelson, Permane, Taffin...) are as much part of RF1's DNA as Pat & Flav were... So that the wound will cicatrize quickly.

[qw56q]

Also, sorry for veering a bit off topic, but the hardest one to replace isn't the team manager, but the technical director! Who the hell is going to fit in Symonds boots?!

Symonds hasn't been technical director for ages.



Renault won two world championships with Bob Bell as the technical director.


Car design and build at the factory is ok. Racetrack based decision may be more questionable.

They might win another 2

Renault F1 Team Statement 23.09.09

Following the unfortunate recent events, the Renault F1 Team has reacted swiftly by implementing a new temporary management team structure, which will be in place from today until the end of the 2009 season.

The reorganisation is as follows:

Bob Bell, currently Technical Director, takes on the duty of Team Principal and Chief Technical Officer.

Jean-François Caubet, currently Director of Marketing and Communications, takes the role of Managing Director.

They will both report to Bernard Rey, President of the Renault F1 Team.

Bob Bell will attend all the remaining races of the season and will be the team’s spokesperson on all sporting and technical matters.

The Renault F1 Team is now ready to concentrate on the future and wishes to stress that no further comments or statements will be issued relating to the events of Singapore 2008.

[xpensive]

Praise the Lord, if Alain Prost had been appointed team principal I would have given Renault's sanity serious doubt.

[Miguel]

Good decision by Renault. And god bless Alain Prost as long as he is not a team principal.