There has been a lot of idle chatter about Dan Ricciardo replacing Mark Webber, and Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen swapping drives. This latter story seems to depend on what happens with the Lotus F1 Team as for some time the proprietors have been working to try to get Renault to increase its involvement in the team. This is entirely logical as the French car manufacturer has lost a massive amount of visibility in F1 since it stopped being a team owner, after the embarrassing Singapore Scandal back in 2009. Renault grabbed a parachute and left the team in the hands of Gerard Lopez and Eric Lux. The problem with that move was that despite winning a string of championships with Red Bull Racing, Renault has had very little publicity. The Red Bulls are smothered in Infiniti badging and the average man on the street does not know, nor care, that the winning engines are from Viry-Chatillon. If it is says Infiniti all over the car it is logical to assume that the engines were probably made in Japan.
The result of this is that Renault is now looking for ways to get a better return on its overall investment in F1. Leaving out the smaller teams that use Renault engines, the only logical choice is for Renault to concentrate its involvement on Lotus F1 Team, which has been doing remarkably well, despite endless rumours about the team’s finances. Renault could gain a lot more publicity if it reorganised its spending and bought the Lotus side pods. Raikkonen is waiting to see if that happens, and talking to Ferrari looks to me like part of the negotiating process. But you never know, maybe Alonso is also watching to see if that happens because he is getting bored with Ferraris that are not quite good enough.
Still, Alonso should perhaps look at Ferrari’s financial results for the first six months of the year. The company had pre-tax profits of $235 million, up 22 percent compared to last year. It also has $1.6 billion in the bank. Oddly, Britain has now overtaken Germany as Ferrari’s biggest market outside the United States and remains ahead of Chinese sales. The Middle East continues to grow.
Tässä paperissa voi lukea esim. Kimi siirtyy Ferrarille jos Alonso lähtee tms ehdollista. Tätä paperia vasten Kimi haluaa selvittää myös Lotuksen suorituskyvyn.
