Renault’s Cyril Abiteboul discussed the potential financial trouble a season restart could bring to teams, the development of his F1 team’s car, and more.
While other team principals have been doing rigorous press runs, one who has remained awfully quiet is Renault’s Abiteboul. However, this silence ended for the Parisian as he spoke at length in an interview with F1.com this past week.
The Renault F1 boss joined an ever-expanding list of figures, most of whom have discussed a similar range of topics, which are often related to the budget cap, and 2020 return, among other things. However, despite the similar set of subject matters, Abiteboul had some different ideas on things such as the season restart.
While most have focused on the positive aspects of the return to racing – scheduled to take place in July at the Red Bull Ring in Austria – this 42-year-old recognized that a return would mean the re-hiring of furloughed employees, even as revenue isn’t as quick to bounce back.
The result, Abiteboul says, could be more financial strain on teams. “When there comes a time to move away from shutdown and restart activity, costs will creep up. We will have to un-furlough people and it may be at a time when revenues do not creep up in the same way, so that might be a more challenging time than the time we have had so far actually.
“There will be a number of costs and burdens associated to moving out of shutdown and producing all the parts. It may be more difficult for some teams than other teams, the smaller teams, independent teams may struggle more with cashflow. So that’s why it’s so important that when we decide to come back and resume activity, we don’t do it for one race, we do it for what we can salvage for a season.
“The amount of notice needed depends on if we have to do a number of back-to-backs. If we’re not in a position to ship some parts that easily, if we are not in position to produce parts simply because we have to respect social distancing in the UK and so on, it may take a bit longer.
“We have to review our plans, which is why it is so important to have a bit of notice, so we can adjust our plan to our capacity and also to our ambitions. If we race, we have certain ambitions from a sporting perspective, but I would say that generally with four weeks of notice, we can be ready to cope with any situation,” summed up Abiteboul.
Prior to the extensive schedule changes, Renault had an aggressive development calendar planned, but with the races at which the upgrades were intended to come in up in the air, the Frenchman stated that these are being reevaluated. Abiteboul was hoping to see the potential in Australian GP but now has to wait longer for the assessment.
“I need to manage expectations but it is true, at the test we generally had a good feeling,” said Abiteboul. “We ticked all our boxes, but those boxes are also very dependent on what other people are doing. One question left unanswered was the relative competitiveness of our car and we were only expecting to find out in Melbourne on Saturday afternoon. Obviously that didn’t happen. We’re very curious to find out.
“We were up for a very aggressive development plan. We’re very keen to get the factory up and running again so we can resume that activity. The figures looked very good in the wind tunnel and production was very busy producing race three and race five packages. All of that is completely up in the air, so that is the situation we have.
“But again, lots of people have bigger frustrations than those ones, so we need to accept we need to be a bit patient.” Renault’s upgrades weren’t the only drastic measures the team were taking in 2020, though. Even before any upgrades had been added, back at winter testing, the car had a revolutionary design with a narrow nosecone and an apparent chassis overhaul.
The French outfit, however, wasn’t the only team to completely change their car. One other team that put significant development into their 2020 car is Racing Point. As has been well-documented, the team worked to replicate Mercedes’ winning formula, and while they received plenty of flak, the design seemed to work rather well.
It brought up a debate about whether their ‘copycat’ design was in keeping with the identity of F1 – something that Abiteboul stated was not discussed in meetings, as the focus surrounded what it meant to be a constructor in F1, whether that’s with regards to the budget cap, or anything else in the sport.
“The meetings have been focused on short term survival and medium and long term sustainability of the sport, which is exactly what needs to happen,” said Abiteboul. “It’s important we side-line the most contentious topics we had over the winter. I’m sure these topics will come back as they are directly connected to the business model of F1.
“It’s all good and nice to agree on the budget cap level but if you can pool your resources, pool your research and development between the teams, it means the levels of budget cap we are talking about are not exactly the ones we are talking about so to a certain degree we’re talking about that.
“We’re not talking directly about the Racing Point case, we’re talking about what it means to be a constructor and what is a business case of being a constructor, that we are talking about and that is an interesting point. We will be thinking and talking about Racing Point legality later. By saying that, I’m not putting any threat, I’m just saying that we need to think about a bit more strategically in the current circumstance.
As for the other topics discussed, there was chat about the much-discussed budget cap situation, the potential delaying of the 2022 technical regulations, and the Ferrari engine fiasco, the final of the three being something Abiteboul pushed for clarity on. With regards to the 2022 regulations, he was against further delays, as he stated that Racing Point and other teams were advocating for a push back to 2023 for the wrong reasons.
“I don’t agree not only because this is coming from what is probably our most direct competitor this year,” said Abiteboul. “I don’t agree simply because F1 needs to be progressive and when everyone moves on from this crisis, both from a health perspective but also from an economic perspective there will be a strong competition between the sports in order to regain momentum, in order to attract the fans, in order to attract people to come to races and to advertise themselves.”
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The story was edited by Darshan Chokhani
