Monday, November 30, 2015

Red Bull F1 signs with Renault for the 2016 season.

I'm not a big fan of Renault. I posted a couple of weeks ago what I thought of them. But somehow they've conned Red Bull into using their engines again for the 2016 season. This is good news for me as a Red Bull supporter - I get to see them (and Torro Rosso) race again next year. It's good news for all the employees of the respective teams too, as well as the drivers (obviously). But as an F1 supporter, it's going to be irritating for me to see Renault still in the sport next year because it means I'm going to have to suffer through another 12 months of Red Bull not being able to compete. Renault can't solve their engine problems, but they won't admit it. They have heat and packaging problems and their EGU recovery and MGU electrical systems are like hand grenades - they pull the pin on the start line and wait for one or other of the items to explode.
So the compromise is that next year we'll see Red Bull racing with unbranded engines. This will hurt Renault (which frankly I have no problem with). If they hadn't pushed so hard for the 'green' engine movement, we wouldn't have had to witness the last two years of them airing their dirty laundry in public. And we might have seen my favourite team being competitive.