Renault to remain in F1: report

Renault to remain in F1: report

Renault will compete in Formula One next season after agreement was reached on its future, the BBC reported on Friday.

But the French car manufacturer will only hold a minority 25 percent shareholding in the team.

The team's employees are set to be notified at their headquarters outside Paris on Friday, with an official announcement likely next week, the BBC said.

The two front-runners in the battle to take over Renault were Luxembourg businessman Gerard Lopez, and David Richards, the boss of the British motor racing engineering firm Prodrive and former team principal of Benetton and BAR in F1.

Lopez is considered the favourite to take over Renault under the auspices of his Genii Capital investment company.

The team's future has been in doubt since Renault held an emergency board meeting in early November to discuss whether to continue in F1.

Renault recorded losses of 2.7 billion euros in the first four months of the year and are considering their future in a sport which costs about 100 million euros a year.

There has been speculation over Renault's future in F1 ever since the FIA, motorsport's governing body, issued a lifetime ban in September to their former team principal Flavio Briatore for ordering Nelson Piquet Junior to deliberately crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

Pat Symonds, Renault's former chief engineer, was banned for five years.

Both men are currently appealing against their respective punishments.

Even without the fall-out from that scandal, worldwide economic problems have also called into question Renault's continued involvement in the sport during a 12-month period where other volume car manufacturers such as Honda, BMW and Toyota have all pulled out of Formula One.

Source: AFP