Renault Sport F1, which supplies power units to Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Lotus and Caterham, has revealed that it’s still awaiting payment from some of its customers.
The manufacturer struggled during the pre-season and has heavily invested in turning its fortunes round which has somewhat paid off.
President Jean-Michel Jalinier says their constant development requires funding. Some of that is coming from Renault itself, whilst some is coming from the teams it supplies.
However he confirmed that “some of the teams” haven’t paid or are paying later, which he described as “unacceptable”.
“In order to develop the action plan we need to secure resources and our resources are coming from two sources,” he told Autosport.
“One is Renault, and we have been able to secure the right resources, even human resources or financial resources, and the other part of it is coming from the teams because we are selling the engines to the teams.
“On this part I must say that we are not at an acceptable situation because some of the teams are just late in payments, and at the time you need to spend resources to catch up you cannot afford to have those [late] payments.”
He refused to name which teams, but it’s unlikely to be those backed by Red Bull billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, leaving just Lotus and Caterham as potential offenders.
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