F1 Fanatic

It’s back:

Quick summary for those who don’t know.
RedBull Racing have been using Renault engines for a few years now, Nissan work closely in Europe with Renault in the Renault-Nissan Alliance where they share manufacturing plants ect, and Nissan apparently want to rebadge the RedBull team’s Renault engine to ‘Infinity’ – the name of the Nissan luxory car division.

An announcemnet is expected on 31/01/2011 regarding the situation between RedBull and Infinity.

Will it be an engine announcement as originally thought as far back as December?
Seems the most likely out of all the choices.

Will it be an unexpected buy out from the Japanese manufactuer?
Sounds too unrealistic considering the recent RBR success, can’t imaging they want to sell up – RedBull are not exactly needing cash!

Will it be title sponsorship similar to Lotus Renault GP?
Sounds reasonable.

I guess all will become apparent on 31/01/11!

>Disclaimer, this could be bull for all I know, it’s taken from the resurgance of the rumour on autosport forums: http://forums.autosport.com/index.php?showtopic=141526<

These rumours have just been blown out of proportion. There is talk that the Renault engines will simply be rebadged as Infiniti to coincide with Infiniti’s push into the European market. However, the suggestion that they are planning to buy Red Bull entirely is ridiculous.

Rebadge – probable
Buy out – no chance, they would have simply bought Renault last year.
Sponsor – maybe.

Steve it won’t be a naming dispute. Infiniti is the luxury brand of Nissan. Nissan and Renault have a relationship together – they’re sister compaies. All it will take is for Nissan/Infiniti to pay a pre-decided amount to Renault in order to rebrand the engine. Renault has the right to accept or decline that offer at will. There is no capacity for dispute, because it’s all internal.

Announcement on monday

I think these tweets from Adam Hay-Nicolls started the rumours again

‘”Major luxury automotive brand enters F1 with world championship winning team, says a press release from the PRISM agency today. Who and Who?”
“It’s a marketing and tech agreement, says the spiel. First thought was Audi and Red Bull, but why brief in London not Austria?”
“Anyway, F1 press will get the skinny on Monday in London and then there’s a public announcement at the Geneva Motor Show”
“I’m almost certain it’s Red Bull Racing – Infiniti. Sold!”‘

http://twitter.com/AdamHayNicholls

Like many, I hoped it would be Audi coming in, but it seems too early for any announcement from them.

I wouldn’t say Infiniti is a ‘major’ brand, but of course, that comment comes from a PR agency, so they are always going to play up the brand.

There are even some rumours of it being Jaguar coming in with Williams (!), but it seems odd that they wouldn’t announce it at the launch last week (although maybe there were contractual problems with Cosworth)

I remember reading (think on Planetf1′s forum) about Redbull/Infinity which someone posted around January before the testing started but nothing came and it just got forgotten.

Will be intetesting, this would be as a engine builder perhaps? Horners always banging on about the lack of BHP in the Renault compared to Ferrari/Mercedes engines. Timing is strange given the regs change in 2 years (and a lot can happen with Teams and ownerships in that time). Intersting stuff.

I’d love it to be jaguar and williams, but it seems unlikely since cosworth was fairly noticable on the new livery.

Huh? Nobody is talking about Williams rebadging their engines …

Will be intetesting, this would be as a engine builder perhaps?

No. Infiniti is Nissan’s luxury car brand. Nissan and Renault have a unique working relationship. If the Red Bull-Infiniti deal works out, it will be a Renault RS27 engine rebadged as an Infiniti for marketing purposes.