Renault F1 team plans face a deal-breaker over bonus for past championships

Renault could be set to withdraw from Formula 1 if agreement is not reached soon with F1 commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone and majority owner CVC Capital Partners over its bonus payment for past success in F1.

The French car manufacturer is now in a position where it will either buy the Lotus F1 team or withdraw from the sport. Simply supplying engines is no longer in its strategy.

Renault Sport boss Cyril Abiteboul has been working hard to get buy-in from all the Renault divisions and to structure a complex deal to purchase Lotus, with Alain Prost becoming a shareholder as Niki Lauda is at Mercedes.

However the board will only purchase the Lotus F1 team if Ecclestone enters a bilateral agreement similar to other leading teams, whereby the team shares in the so-called CCB bonus scheme. Under the scheme, introduced four years ago to reward the sports' biggest names, Ferrari receives $100m for its past successes and history and Red Bull receives over $70m for its four world titles since 2000.

The five teams in the CCBs scheme, also including Mercedes, McLaren and Williams, will receive the payments until the expiration of their bilateral agreements with F1 in 2020.

Renault won the 2005 and 2006 world championships and French sources suggest that Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn and his team are seeking CCB sums of around $35m in addition to any prize money the team may accrue. This would put it broadly in line with Mercedes, which had to fight hard for its CCB bonus when the deals were being done and was the last of the five top teams to sign as a result.

French sources say that in these negotiations Renault has argued that it deserves additional CCB recognition for its status and long contribution to the sport. It has powered cars to 168 race wins, 11 drivers' championships and 12 constructors' championships, but only two of each as a constructor in its own right.

This is the sticking point and while French sources last night were quite optimistic that Renault would reach agreement with CVC and Ecclestone and complete the purchase of Lotus, sources close to the negotiations say that a Renault withdrawal from F1 is now looking more likely.

If that were to happen the future of the Enstone based Lotus team is uncertain.

The sport would also have only three manufacturers of the hybrid turbo engines introduced in 2014 and only two of those are competitive; Ferrari and Mercedes. Honda is playing catch up having made a commitment in March 2013 to join in 2015. Its first engine tried to be radical and has been botched with some key design flaws, such as the compressor and an underpowered Energy Recovery System, which leaves the drivers without enough deployment on a lap, so they lose ground.

To be fair to Honda, engineers in current benchmark suppliers say that they had the same problems with test engines when they were preparing for 2014, The problem is that Honda is doing their development work in public with two world champions as test drivers.

Renault was one of the prime movers behind the switch to hybrid turbo engines, which it argued were more road relevant and even made it a condition of remaining in F1 that the rules moved this way. Ironically it was dominating the sport with Red Bull at the time and, although it won three races last season with its hybrid engine, this year it has gone backwards.

Looking further down the road, the three remaining engine manufacturers would have considerable power over the sport, no pun intended, as the cars will not run without these highly complex pieces of equipment and no other supplier could step in, given the lead times and investment needed to make a hybrid turbo power unit.

What do you think of this situation? How important is it to keep Renault in F1?