Renault won’t ‘foot the whole bill’ for F1 team

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In the round-up: Renault’s chief technical officer Bob Bell says Renault expects its F1 teams to attract income to supplement its budget.

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There were many inspired attempts at translating Alonso’s all-emoji tweet (see yesterday’s round-up). Neil’s was the funniest:

Fly to circuit. Do lots of practice laps, which are boring – you can’t really do anything interesting. Take sleeping pills, wake up when alarm goes off feeling like a monkey with a sore head. Wait until feeling wide awake, then go to gym for a bit.

Then elimination qualifying starts and no one has a clue what’s happening. Lots of times are set. Lots of people fall asleep because it’s boring. Car gets some medicine because it made it through Q1, people still looking but none of them like the format. Distribute Prozac to the crowd, and they all perk up. The cars go into parc ferme and no one is allowed to do anything with them.

From a random sample of eight fans, three are asleep, two are still watching and three are really unhappy with what they just saw. More sleeping pills, then the race the next day. Manage six laps before the car breaks down. No bikes for a lift back to the pits, and can’t walk back because it broke down on the outside of the track. Go to the gym. Run out of characters.
Neil (@Neilosjames)

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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42 comments on “Renault won’t ‘foot the whole bill’ for F1 team”

  1. Hamilton’s statements are really good. :)

    1. Hamilton is a goof.

  2. Do I not understand the F1 broadcasting blog correctly or does he/her not know that FOM take 37% of all revenue after 100% of costs have been deducted?

    1. ColdFly F1 (@)
      27th March 2016, 10:03

      I think you (@hohum) understand it correctly, and the author (David Nelson) made a few convenient shortcuts.
      If If Sky/C4 pays £70 in 2016, then is is expected to be £87 (David’s own ‘escalator’). Thus the extra revenue is ‘merely’ £50m.
      Then Bernie can first deduct its expenses. And with the help of CVC he’ll be able to find additional ‘costs’ easily which will use up most of the £50m (e.g. pay his own TV production company higher fees).
      And then only some 62% will go to the teams.

      And 1/11th of 62% of almost nothing will not cover the lost sponsorship revenue because the sponsors value F1 based on popularity.
      This decoder TV deal is just one of the ‘1000 cuts’.

  3. @tommy-c s photo is very good but unless you know about the fluoro paint on the camera there is no way to know that it is not Hamilton. Corrections and abuse below.

    1. you still see the helmet @hohum, and luckily this year their helmets are NOT almost the same

      1. Right, thanks @bascb , Tiger stripes for Rosberg, maybe @keithcollantine can publish a pictorial display of all this years helmets or easier still a link to such, or maybe I missed it on one of those days I just threw my hands up in despair and left the site.

        1. indeed you must have missed this one – https://www.racefans.net/2016/03/17/2016-f1-drivers-helmets/ – a while ago then @hohum

    2. You mean except for the t-bar, the black helmet, the number 6, and the green gloves… you’d almost mistake it for Hamilton!

      1. Okay, black helmet, green gloves means it’s Rosberg, #6 ? a return to the photo to find the elusive number has revealed what appears to be red ring on centre where the nose cone joins the main chassis, this I presume is the lower part of #6, it could be much larger. Thank you @pastaman, could you now list the visual clues that identify the other drivers to help the casual viewer and old duffers like me.

        1. pastaman (@)
          28th March 2016, 4:32

          True, you can’t make out the entire 6, but it’s definitely not a 44 ;)

        2. @hohum the easiest way is probably the t-bar and just to remember who is the “number 2” driver with the bright yellow paint. You can also go by the helmets, but that only works for teams where the drivers have pretty distinct color schemes. RB and TR are pretty difficult to tell apart by the helmets on television, so I use the t-bar or car numbers for them.

          1. @pastaman @bascb, thankyou both, really I just thought that photo was an excellent example of the difficulty the casual viewer will have identifying car/driver, but different colour gloves was a revelation, I must check the other teams for that one.

  4. Not a yellow helmet, not a white glove.

    Not Hamilton.

      1. I rest my case.

  5. Will the teams benefit from the new sky f1 deal??? I can answer that…. NO!!! but we can be sure the Bernie and the cvc will. Every deal they make comes down to 1 thing and that’s filling their pockets.

  6. Maybe its because Ive been paying to watch F1 for the good part of the last 17 years, I dont really have a problem with it, but perhaps is because Im used to it.

    Free to air sports is a thing of the past in many parts of Asia, has been since the late 90s.

    I always look to how the Premier League has gone from strength to strength as a product over the last 24 years. It has done so exclusively from behind the pay wall. How was this made possible? For one, it was/is marketed extremely well, majority of its viewers hail from outside of Europe. Some argue that F1’s traditional home in Europe, but isnt it football’s spiritual home as well? The biggest clubs in the world have always been in Europe, the best players have always plied their trade there, so whats the difference?

    The pay wall is inevitable. The business model of most top line sports rely on broadcast rights, so in the end, money talks. Its unfortunate, but thats the way the world works.

    Even with a pay wall, F1 can be successful. If the product is good, people will pay to watch. Which is why the EPL has done so well, it is an amazing product. Similarly, T20 cricket (namely the IPL) is also a great example, its a brilliant product designed for the average consumer, and in relatively terms, the broadcast fees it commands is massive, but people are still willing to pay to watch it.

    Sky does a brilliant job with its broadcast, but to draw in the viewers, we need the product to be brilliant. F1 is at a point where even the hardcore fans such as many of us here are disgruntled, so there is something not quite right with it. We want the best drivers, in the fastest cars, going wheel to wheel, where all teams can compete. But F1 as a whole, seems to be masters at “shooting one’s self in the foot”. The hullabaloo surrounding the much derided elimination qualifying is a good example. The previous system was brilliant for TV, but hey, someone thought otherwise, and it was changed, to the detriment of the viewer, it was embarrassing.

    If the quality of the product continues to degrade, or the perception that it is in decline persists, pay wall or not, viewers wont tune in. Its simple. F1 needs to hire a good marketing company to sell the sport and their first order of business should be to stop Bernie from speaking to the media. My vote would go to Zak Brown. He should be made the face of FOM and be groomed as Bernie’s successor.

    1. I think another thing that football has going for it, that F1 cannot really tap into, is the sheer amount of people who play football in a local play ground @jaymenon10, learning to love it, possibly aspiring to be one of its stars themselves.

      Even karting is far less low entry than playing football will ever be, and therefore even if the product would work as well as Premier league football it would need far more promotion to get people to actually pay attention and even want to start paying for the coverage. Then there is betting – wide spread for football, not quite a thing for F1, and we have a wholly different situation.

      We can already see how the quality of the Sky coverage is getting worse and worse with more exclusivity and less pressure to invest too.

    2. I been paying since 2009 and i dont see the problem. Im happy to get rid of The ads.

    3. @jaymenon10
      Before the Premier League was established, the old First Division didn’t televise live matches in the UK. When I was a kid the only club football that was shown live were a few cup games. You either went to the match, listened to it on the radio, or watched the highlights on Saturday night.
      As such, the ability to watch live club matches on SKY was a big deal, and worth paying for because it was offering you something you’d never been able to get before.
      The Premier League also shows several games a week on TV, back in the day when SKY had exclussive rights to broadcast games you could watch more than a dozen games a month, plus highlights of every other game.
      That’s a big difference to F1, which until recently had been available free to air for a very long time, and only has two or three GP’s a month.
      If I was a big fan of football, I could justify the cost of a SKY Sports subscription because I’d be getting to watch several Premier League games, highlights of every other game, games from Spain and other leagues too. There’s often a game being shown live at least 5 times a week. That’s pretty good value.
      As an F1 fan with very little interest in other sports, how can I justify the same cost for one, two, and occaisionally three races a month, the monotonous F1 show, and not a lot else ?
      Until last season I hadn’t missed a qualy or race in over 20 years, I used to plan work, social life and holidays around the season to ensure I never missed anything. This season I recorded the highlights on C4, and didn’t get around to watching it until Wednesday evening, and didn’t even bother with qualy. And my collection of merchandise, books, DVD’s, and other F1 related stuff probably won’t be getting any bigger. It might not be a lot in the grand scheme of things, but the hundreds of pounds a year I used to spend on F1 will be spent elsewhere from now on.

      1. “As an F1 fan with very little interest in other sports, how can I justify the same cost for one, two, and occaisionally three races a month, the monotonous F1 show, and not a lot else ?”

        Exactly. I’m a big fan of F1, yet I wouldn’t pay for sky sports just to watch it. It’s not worth it. Luckily my house mate likes football and rugby, so he gets sports and let’s me watch F1 on it.

        Also, football is a much more popular sport in the UK. Even those not lucky enough to be able to afford sky can still see most games at their local pub. Not many pubs put the F1 on, and those which do will switch over if there’s a football match on, or rugby, or practically any other sport.

        1. ‘Not many pubs put the F1 on, and those which do will switch over if there’s a football match on, or rugby, or practically any other sport.”

          I hate it when they do that

    4. petebaldwin (@)
      27th March 2016, 13:38

      Also, bear in mind that other than for top matches, getting illegal streams can be an issue. With F1, it is no an issue at all. It’s usually easier than finding the remote to switch the TV on!

      You have to be on top of these things to try and manage them. The obvious solution for F1 would be something along the lines of an online subscription package which gets you all sessions streamed live including live timing, customisable cameras (on-boards), exclusive interviews, behind the scenes stuff as well as classic races and other more technical programmes etc. If they did that, people would sign up worldwide and they’d make more than they do off the TV deals. Of course this is F1 so if they did that, they’d probably try and charge £200 a month….

  7. Frenzy, restless f1 aficcionados, stop bickering, have a moment of clarity. F1 is still great enjoy f1.

    1. I keep hoping that is true, but in between I feel pretty much as frustrated as Gary Hartstein, or indeed David Coulthard @peartree. Although i hardly ever have to defend F1 here, because there are only a handfull of people I know that even know about it.

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      27th March 2016, 13:44

      That’s the problem though – it’s not. It’s good at best. F1 will only be great again when someone in charge wants it to be great. As it stands, who in F1 (excluding the drivers and fans who are routinely ignored) wants F1 to be great and more importantly, has done anything in the last few years to help achieve this?

      1. @petebaldwin I’ve come to realise that different fans want different things, which is why no matter what happens to f1 governance, a lot of fans won’t have their prayers answered. How can F1fanatics defend the perks of the new qualifying system or DRS? Flawed concepts from the get-go. In my view an illustration that fans can’t unanimously agree, let alone cvc, Bernie the FIA and the GPDA, at least everyone’s interested in F1 at the moment.
        Likewise @bascb .

  8. WilliamB (@william-brierty)
    27th March 2016, 9:36

    Given that Ecclestone described elimination qualifying as “pretty c*ahem*p” and has since backed the FIA’s plan to retain it unaltered, giving Bernie more powers would probably amount to building a F1 car completely out of money and letting Maldonado drive it…down the side of an active volcano…

    But really, on past form, will we soon learn that elimination qualifying was an idea contributed to the FIA by King Juan Carlos…or Pamela Anderson? Somebody needs to stop Bernie and the FIA turning this sport into an elaborate corporate rewards system/celebrity day-out.

    1. Too late now!
      It just remains for Bernie to make yet another fortune from the float or sale, if his secret contorted deals ever pass due diligence. I doubt that can happen since they run so deep into all parts of F1 affecting the rules, and the making of rules, the only possible way is a private sale. It needs to happen before 2020 when the CVC/FIA finance agreement comes to a an end. (thought to be against the previous EU Commission’s ruling by many)
      There can now be no doubt that the FIA is under Bernie’s control, as rules get changed to suit Bernie and his wild ideas. ie Elimination qualy or the number of races per year which was fixed as a maximum of 20 in the Sporting Regs for many years until Bernie wanted more.
      The control of the paddock is apparently down to FOM now too with an ever shrinking admittance,, soon it will be friends of Bernie only (Rolex wearers) But the rules say it is the FIA’s decision as to who gets passes.
      No, it is time for a very big change.

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      27th March 2016, 13:46

      “Somebody needs to stop Bernie and the FIA turning this sport into an elaborate corporate rewards system/celebrity day-out.”

      That’s like saying someone needs to stop the cavemen from inventing the wheel….

      1. WilliamB (@william-brierty)
        28th March 2016, 11:51

        @petebaldwin – Not really, the wheel was useful and didn’t come at the cost of anything else.

  9. Wasn’t it Renault being a bit tight with resources that caused them to start the hybrid era on the back foot? Now they saying their team must perform and bring n extra funds, surly the sponsors will only come if their car is at the sharp end, which is going to take significant capital investment. Perhaps Renault should follow Mercedes and write it all off as marketing spend, Mercedes have been getting double the global exposure for their money than if they simply bought advertising space, Renault need to see that a viable F1 team needs to bee close to are at the front before it can stimulate extra revenue from its sponsorship deals.
    They just don’t seem to be able to fully embrace the concept that winning in F1 takes big investment as well as all the right people on board.

  10. A midfield team probably gets sufficient exposure for renault. After all to be in F1 is to display technological prowess. The collosal expense of trying to compete with Merc or Ferrari is perhaps no so attractive because of this simple fact! Its a bit like staying up in the EPL. Perhaps F1 needs a division 2 utilising last years cars or a simpler version of the current specification with relegation. Could be run as a support race at limited GP weekends and feature rookies etc. Best way to feed new teams in bg allowing them to buy all standard parts at fixed prices, the Haas method? Maybe even the monocock. Try to create a sport from what seems to be an ever corporate business model.

    1. RaceProUK (@)
      27th March 2016, 12:40

      It’s spelt ‘monocoque’ ;)

    2. Monocock! XD
      Thank God there is no duocock running around! :) Although, ladies might love it! :)

  11. ForzaAlonsoF1
    27th March 2016, 11:53

    On the subject of Gary Hartstein’s article, can someone enlighten me why he got binned by the FIA? I’ve got kids now and can only manage the occasional dip back into Formula One so seem to have lost track somewhat. I can only think its because he always seems to be running his mouth?

    1. RaceProUK (@)
      27th March 2016, 12:43

      Given the sheer amount of work he’s put into advancing safety and medical care in motorsport, I think he’s earned the right to ‘run his mouth’ occasionally.

      1. Thanks, I’m in total agreement there.

    2. ForzaAlonsoF1, Hartstein himself has claimed that he was forced out of the sport due to political disputes between himself and Todt, particularly given that Hartstein was strongly supported by Mosely. Hartstein himself has stated in that past that Mosely would freely give him any resources which he asked for, which may have antagonised some other sections of the FIA that may have envied Mosely’s very generous attitude towards Hartstein.

      He has also claimed it was in part because he spoke out against the FIA’s official line when the Bahrain GP was held a few years ago amidst the protests, after which he claims that Todt personally and angrily rebuked him for his stance.

      However, it has to be said that we have often only heard Hartstein’s side of the story being reported in the media thanks to Hartstein’s links within the motorsport press, so to a certain extent the press coverage of the affair is potentially biased in his favour.

      With regards to your comment about “running his mouth”, whilst I don’t know if that was necessarily the case within the FIA, there is an indication that he could sometimes be a bit of an abrasive and hard headed individual to work with if he was particularly riled up about something. Perhaps, in part, this may have been because he felt that he could rely on Mosely backing him up in most disputes, which may therefore have lead him to be less willing to compromise in certain debates.

      1. Thank you for clearing that up for me Anon! :)

  12. I cannot but agree with Bernie on this one – as we well know, true visionaries have always been hampered by rules, political correctness and all those insufferably common people standing in the way of greatness.

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