DanielPT wrote:mario wrote:Whilst Lotus were able to switch engine suppliers, Red Bull might find it harder to do so by comparison.
From the point of view of Mercedes, they are probably fairly confident that neither Lotus, Force India nor Williams will be able to present a season long challenge to them, and from their point of view there was probably little risk in supplying Lotus with engines. Red Bull, however, are much more likely to compete directly with them, so Mercedes would probably be much more wary in supplying them.
Similarly, Ferrari are also likely to take the attitude that they are perfectly happy for Red Bull to be hobbled by their engine supplier, and therefore are unlikely to want to supply them either.
Given that, the only other current engine supplier in the field that might be a possible option would be Honda - however, unless Honda were able to improve their performance significantly, there would be little incentive for Red Bull to switch from Renault to Honda.
You forgot two other alternatives. I know they are not likely for next year, but could be to the year after if they really wanted it. A) Find a new supplier just like McLaren did or B) Build their own engine. For the A) it wouldn't be easy for them to lure anyone competent enough but Red Bull is a massive company and has the best designer on the grid. Plus they have knowledge on what went wrong with Renault. They could try to go to Audi/VW/Porsche or BMW. Mercedes is leading the way by a long shot and reaping the fame for trouncing other manufacturers in F1 (which is still important) and that could help to bring some major Mercedes rivals into F1. If not, there were also some rumors going around saying they were employing engine engineers. They were so vocal in the criticism to Renault that maybe it is time for them to put money where their mouth is. It could be the right opportunity for them to become full on racers.
It is true that they could look to draw in a new manufacturer, but one disadvantage with that is the engine development token system - remember, the token system will be tightened further in 2016 and 2017, so a new engine manufacturer would find themselves in an increasingly disadvantageous position as time wears on.
Furthermore, there are rumours that Red Bull had already tried to draw in the VW Group in the past, but Piech is known to be strongly opposed to Bernie and so, as long as one or the other is in charge, VW is quite unlikely to enter into F1.
I'm not sure who else might be interested in the new regulations either - BMW seem to have been rather cool about the idea and Toyota are uncomfortable with the high investment required (they're already complaining about the costs of competing in the WEC, and their program is still one of the cheapest entries in the WEC field), so I can't see any of the manufacturers more recently involved in F1 getting involved again.
I can't really think of any manufacturers expressing an interest in F1 - the deal between Honda and McLaren took a long time to come to fruition (in the order of three years), and that was with an engine partner who were already keen on re-entering the sport (having been involved with the original negotiations on the turbo engine format). How much harder might it be to draw in a new manufacturer who is only modestly interested or fairly neutral on the idea of entering F1?
As for building an engine themselves, that also seems unlikely - Red Bull's employed some engine specialists, but they are mostly working under Illen's direction, as he has been appointed to help Renault with their development program.
Marko has also indicated that Red Bull would not really afford the investment required to run both their own teams and their own engine manufacturing division too. Perhaps, at a stretch, they could outsource development to an independent like Cosworth, but even then it would still be a fairly sizeable drain on their resources.