Comments on: Why Renault is right to be scared

By: PiterKokoniz

PiterKokoniz — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:01:29 +0000

Hi !
My name is Piter Kokoniz. oOnly want to tell, that I’v found your blog very interesting
And want to ask you: is this blog your hobby?
Sorry for my bad english:)
Thank you:)
Piter Kokoniz, from Latvia

By: RaiulBaztepo

RaiulBaztepo — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 22:03:38 +0000

Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo

By: Over the white line: a sign of the times for Bentley buyers | Brits on Pole

Over the white line: a sign of the times for Bentley buyers | Brits on Pole — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:12:29 +0000

[...] More worrying news for the British motorsport industry from James Allen. What if Honda isn’t the only F1 team in trouble? What if Oxfordshire-based Renault is going the same way, with redundancies on the cards and its major sponsor wavering? He describes the appalling financial outlook for the French car industry and says: “the company has to be thinking of its F1 programme with the same affection as Honda had for theirs. The cost saving package agreed before Christmas was vital, but given that Renault’s estimated spend on F1 was around €300 million last year, you can see that FOTA and the FIA are going to have to cut the costs of competing a bit more seriously still if Renault are to have any chance of carrying on as a competitor in 2010.” Sobering stuff, which you can read in full here. [...]

By: Adam Brinkley

Adam Brinkley — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:21:07 +0000

With the F1 coverage going to the BBC this year where does this leave other coverage of motorsports on ITV, such as the BTCC rounds and all there support races that recived such great air time in the last few seasons on ITV-Sport. Also i believe ITV showed a highlights programe of WTCC from Brands Hatch in the last couple of years will this still be screened on ITV channels as well? PS: Great read as ever!

By: ozzy

ozzy — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:10:48 +0000

There is one thing i could not figure out with alonso’s ferrari deal… why they are waiting for 2 more years…. raikkonen contract was going to expire this year had they not renewed it… and if you are going to get alonso on board anyway, why you want to wait… they wanted to wait more that they have even renewed raikkonen’s contract for one more year…is it the logic behind this…because that did not seem to me to be logical..

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:26:35 +0000

I really hope all the issues around costs in F1 get sorted out and soon. If it carries on the way it is going we will end up watching Mclaren v Ferrari with a four car grid every two weeks as it seems in the current climate they are the only two teams who can sustain the cost and development.

I would love the sport to be open to more independant teams. Bring back the times like the late 80′s and early 90′s. The grid was so full you had to qualify to qualify and we had great names like Lotus, Williams, Tyrell, March, Fondmetal, Jordan, Ligier. Rather than just a few corporate tems with really really long names like “Vodafone santandare IBM Boss Tag Heuer And anyone else mclaren mercedes”. I know the names is over inflated but I think you get my point.

I know it sounds like i’m moaning and I do realise that times change and costs do go up. But I just don’t want to see the soul of the sport that I love ripped out and on Sunday afternoon I’m watching a small grid of cars in some faraway country that up until five years ago didn’t know what Formula 1 was on a track that may as well be Heathrow airport with a few traffic cones to mark out the track.

By: rpaco

rpaco — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:06:11 +0000

Having lived through hard times in the motor industry myself I can sympathise with the Renault staff.

You have to remember where some (a lot) of the money comes from ie the Motor Manufacturers (MMs)
It is somewhat ironic that the actions of Mr Ghosn have put many tens of thousands of workers in the supply chain in dire peril. His renowned aggressive cost cutting and pressurising of suppliers to do more and more with less and less margin, gave Renault and his other previous employers much greater margins but at the expense of leaving their suppliers on a knife edge of profit so thin that even the smallest reduction in volume would tip them into a loss. Now that they have cuts of 40 – 50% in production or dead stops in delivery, many have gone and many more of them will fold in the next few weeks.

Of the major Motor Manufacturers in Europe I would anticipate the weakest one or two disappearing within a year or maybe as long as two. (Neither have F1 teams) They will take a lot of suppliers down with them. The remaining market size is simply far to small to support all of the MMs operating in Europe. In this context you have to consider the value of having an F1 team; is it worthwhile?
Yes to us obviously it is, but the attitude of those made redundant by the Reggie might be somewhat different.

So to sponsors, are Elf still around? They were joined at the hip to the Reggie for many years in the history of the sport.

By: Si

Si — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:55:37 +0000

[ Thanks for the tip, Moderator ]