Fresh off the heels of Helmut Marko’s recent threats about his team exiting Formula 1, now it was Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz who expressed the same feelings recently.
Speaking to the media, Mateschitz confirmed that his team may indeed be forced to leave F1 if they cannot get a competitive engine.
“We’ll only stay in Formula 1 if we have a competitive team, and we need a competitive power unit for that,” said Mateschitz, while also arguing that “If we don’t have one, we can race with the best car and the best drivers and still have no chance of competing for victory.”
He does have a point there, but there are always two sides to every story and there are definitely two clear sides to this one.
In one corner we have Red Bull, who by all accounts isn’t a car manufacturer, which means they rely on Renault 100% in terms of power unit development (which is what Mateschitz argues too) – and if Renault can’t deliver a competitive engine, then the team is basically powerless. Unless they sign with a different engine manufacturer, of course.
However, the Red Bull boss also said that “As a manufacturer, it’s your task to deliver a competitive power unit. If you can do that, it’s great. If, for whatever reason, you can’t do that, you should pull out.”
That, to us, sounds a lot like Red Bull telling Renault what they should do if they can’t get their engine right. Go work or go home-type of thing. We can’t imagine Renault not taking offense to that.
As for the other side of the story, they might just need a bit more time and things could turn around for them. If not this year, perhaps the next. If Ferrari could put up with a really bad season (2014), why couldn’t Red Bull do the same?
Story references: autosport