MOTORSPORT: Renault saves Lotus F1 team

It’s official now that Renault will become a fully-fledged Formula 1 constructor again next year after confirmation of a deal that has rescued the Lotus team from the brink of financial administration.

As its arrangement to stop supplying its V6 hybrid power plants to Red Bull Racing and the associated Toro Rosso team has disintegrated this season, Renault has agreed to buy back 65 per cent of the Lotus team that it previously owned.

As Renault F1 that team won world titles with Fernando Alonso in 2005-06, and before that, as the Benetton team, with Michael Schumacher in 1995 (his first crown the previous year was with a Ford engine).

It is a far different entity to the Lotus car company and race team that was headed by brilliant British engineer Colin Chapman and was Grand Prix racing’s most innovative and successful outfit from the mid-1960s to the mid-70s.

Malaysian car manufacturer Proton now owns the Lotus brand and allows the financially-crippled F1 team in which the major owner is Luxembourg-based financial company Genii Capital to use the name under licence.

Lotus F1 could have been put into administration this week if it had been unable to convince judge Colin Birss it eventually would pay £2.7m in British taxes it has failed to cough up in the past three months.

A letter of intent from Renault regarding the proposed buyout satisfied the judge and has saved the jobs of 400 staff at the team’s base in Enstone, Oxfordshire.

The team has used Mercedes power units this season but will now need to unwind that arrangement with Renault set to operate the outfit under its own name and with its own V6 hybrids that have been so strongly criticised by Red Bull Racing, which is set to switch to Ferrari engines next season.

“The signature of this letter of intent marks Renault's first step towards the project of a Renault F1 team from the 2016 racing season, thereby extending 38 years of commitment of the brand to the world’s premier motorsport championship series,” Renault said in a statement provided to the London court and issued publicly.

The judge allowed Renault and Lotus until December 7 to finalise the takeover, which seemingly will involve little cash after the team’s debts are settled.

Renault previously bailed out of the team after a race-fixing scandal in which its management, primarily colourful Italian Flavio Briatore, was found to have ordered Brazilian driver Nelson Piquet Junior to deliberately crash to help Alonso win the first Singapore GP in 2008.

Aussies get big chance with Porsche
Two 23-year-old Australian racing drivers will compete at next week’s Porsche Motorsport Junior Programme Shootout in Germany.

Porsche Carrera Cup Australia leader Nick Foster had already been chosen to participate, and now Richard Muscat – fifth in the Aussie series – is going too as a wildcard.

The two-day competition, on October 5-6, will evaluate top drivers aged between 18 and 26 from seven Carrera Cup championships around the world – Asia, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Scandinavia as well as Australia.

The venue is being kept secret to avoid anyone testing there in advance.

Drivers will be evaluated at the wheel of a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car as well as for their engineering and communication skills.

The winner will become an official Porsche junior driver and receive €200,000 towards a drive in next year’s Porsche Supercup, a series which is a support category to Formula 1 at some grands prix in Europe and the USA.

Foster, from the Gold Coast, and Muscat, from Melbourne and who won last year’s Australian GT Championship in a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3, will have to rush back from next week’s shootout for the penultimate round of Australia’s Carrera Cup at Mt Panorama during the Bathurst 1000 program on the second weekend of October.