TBK-Light.com

Thank you phil1993! So, Lotus is not that Lotus anymore, right? We call a team manufacture team, if the car is 100% made by that manufacture? Like Ferrari and Mercedes - both produce chasis, and engine too.

Not really.

The real Lotus back in the day, never built their own engines, but the team was directly connected to the make, when Team Lotus and Lotus Cars were owned by the same people.

Red Bull is usually the team that represents Renault's interests at 'big four' team meetings ... perhaps they'll now get an extra seat at the table with Lotus finishing fourth in the constructors ahead of Mercedes, but I can't imagine Mercedes being left out due to probable moaning about this rather than improving their car's performance.

As far as I'm aware, Lotus is privately owned by Genii Capital and has very little to do with Group Lotus/Proton. Genii is just an investment group waiting until an opportune moment to sell the team comes along. Rumour has it they came very close to parting with a substantial amount of shares towards the end of last year but Raikkonen's win in Abu Dhabi persuaded Lopez to hold out.

I'm still a bit confused about the Group Lotus situation to be honest. I'm not sure what their involvement is with the GP2/GP3 teams either.

_________________
Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Okay, so we used to have Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault, BMW, Toyota, Honda (and so on), but we only have Ferrari and Mercedes as clear (!) manufacture team. So, if they ask people worldwide, they will not be sure "what car" is Red Bull, Caterham, Marussia, Force India,... (my non-F1 fan friends always ask me, what car is Red Bull, and I ty to explain them, that they have Renault engine, but the car is made by Red Bull. "What, an energy drink produces a car?" - and so on. To be honest, I understand their confusion.)

Yes, in simple terms.

Although in more complex terms, they're moving more and more towards becoming Renault's team. Infiniti's title sponsorship is worth quite a lot and Infiniti is an offshoot of Nissan, which is 43% owned by Renault. It's a useful deal because not only is it financially beneficial, but they also gain a lot of technical expertise as part of said deal, which will be helpful next year. That was one of Red Bull's main concerns if a budget cap was implemented.

With Marussia, the team is still operated under Manor Grand Prix, but Marussia Motors has a 'significant stake' in the team. The Guardian believes this to be 70.6% with the rest owned by Lloyds.

_________________
Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Lloyds the off-shoot of Wetherspoon's or Lloyd's bank? Or Lloyd's pharmacy?

Oh, I got it!
Thank you very much guys!

Mclaren can be considered as a real manufacturer now I think? Except the engine everything is build in-house and lessons learned there are applied to Mclaren Automotive.

Lloyds Banking Group

_________________
Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

maybe GoPro will sponsor the race and put dash cams on the cars and on safety car aswell

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

We all know what's going to happen at the first Russian GP...

Putin will make his F1 debut, get the pole and win the race. Probably without even stepping into a car. Or he'll achieve both driving a Lada Riva.

_________________
BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

I sense sarcasm. I really think that he will be able to do that.

I miss yellow cars.

if it wasn't by Total, renault in 2010 was almost perfect

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

I wouldn't mind a Russian winning a GP because the anthem rocks.

Agreed.

don't know if we gonna hears stories about robbery, but maybe a meteorite will hit the circuit or the surroundings of it

Mercedes produces it's engines, obviously, but the car(chassis and whole bodywork) is designed and developed entirely in Brackley(England). Mercedes just funds the team as was the case with Honda



As with Mercedes and Honda, BMW also funded Sauber to produce a car for them, and Renault funded Enstone's for the same

Of all those, I guess the only real manufacturers that built their whole car using their original resources were Toyota and Ferrari, in recent years.

Eventhough the Toyota F1 team comprised of an international staff and was located in Germany, that place(with all windtunnel, CFD departments and etc) belongs to TMG(Toyota Motorsports GmbH). Toyota's facility, in Cologne, is so good that even the likes of Mclaren, and now most specially Ferrari(which will develop F138 entirely with Toyota's windtunnel), uses it.

Hinwill's and Brackley's facilities temporarily belongs/ed to their funders, I guess, but they aren't original infrastructure of the manufactors that we're talking about.

Red Bull(the energy drink) just does the same as the car manufactores, which is to fund, previously independent, or at least unrelated to them, Companies/Teams(or whatever you wanna call Hinwill's, Brackley's, Enstone's, Milton Keynes') to build cars for them



Yeah, if they also produced their own engine, they would be a perfect manufactorer team

Do or did they? Did they not actually own the teams? OK, they might have not built the original bricks and mortar and the majority of the staff may have been taken on by their predecessors, but as far as I could tell BMW/Honda/Renault/Mercedes owned the facilities and the people involved and weren't actually funding some other party to construct the car for them.