Renault were lured back to F1 by lucrative offer but remain miles behind Mercedes

The hurdle facing the Renault Formula One team has been revealed in documents which state that it has to win back-to-back championships and at least 22 races to earn a prize money bonus worth around £16m.

The team, which is owned by the French car manufacturer but based in Oxfordshire, has got off to a slow start in its 2018 campaign. Its drivers, Nico Hülkenberg and Carlos Sainz, crossed the finish line in seventh and tenth place respectively at last weekend’s season-opener in Australia. It goes into next week’s Bahrain Grand Prix fifth in the standings which is one higher than where it finished last year. This made it even tougher for the team to turbocharge its prize money haul.

Renault’s history in F1 stretches back decades but its fortunes hit the wall when its championship-winning team was charged with fixing the result of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. It led to Renault selling up to the investment firm Genii but it remained as an engine supplier. By the end of 2015 the team had got into financial difficulty and Renault bought it back for £1. It was rumoured that it had been offered a high-octane incentive and this has now been confirmed.

Buried in F1 company documents is the revelation that in addition to the £655m of prize money which is paid to the ten teams, “one further team has the right to receive double world champion bonus payment, should they qualify by winning back-to-back constructors’ world championships, and in the course of doing so, win 22 races or more.”

It is similar to the deal which was offered to reigning champions Mercedes when its winning streak began in 2014. Since then it has one won championship with Nico Rosberg while Lewis Hamilton has steered the team to three more. F1’s former boss Bernie Ecclestone promised Mercedes a prize money bonus if it could win two consecutive championships and 25 races across two seasons.

“I was an idiot. I said it would never happen and it did,” says Ecclestone, adding that Renault “have got to do more or less what Mercedes has done.” It has been richly rewarded for it.

Mercedes received an estimated total of £111m of prize money for winning the championship last year compared to Renault’s tally of £41m. The F1 company documents reveal the size of the bonus paid to Mercedes as they state that in 2015, which was when it first won back-to-back titles, there was “a $22 million [£15.7 million] higher fee paid to one Team, as it qualified for an additional performance related Prize Fund element”.

The bonus has accelerated since then in line with Mercedes’ continued success on track. F1 documents state that in 2016 the total prize money included “$25 million [£17.8 million] of fees related to a new fixed payment to one Team that had qualified for an additional performance related Prize Fund element”.

It would come in handy for Renault as its latest accounts reveal that it made a net loss of £3.3m in 2016 even though its revenue rose 52.7 per cent to £119.7m. This was driven by costs surging 7.6 per cent to £121m as the French car manufacturer invested in the team. Time will tell whether it pays off.