Nissan’s luxury brand Infiniti is the latest and most prominent sponsor of Red Bull Racing, and it is wasting no time in milking the potential. Infiniti has plans to collaborate with the F1 champions on a high performance road car project, it has been revealed.
“Our relationship with Red Bull is only five races old, but the trajectory for it is to move on and work more closely together. One way of doing that is on a road car project,” said Simon Sproule, Nissan’s Corporate VP for Global Motorsport.
The Brit cited the well regarded Renault Clio Williams as a “credible” and successful example of a collaboration between a road car maker and a race team. He said that whichever base car chosen will have to be substantially reworked and would have to be re-homologated before it can go on sale.
The Clio Williams was launched in 1992, but it was entirely engineered by Renault. This collaboration is likely to involve real F1 engineers from Red Bull. “There’s no reason not to be involved. We have proved that Red Bull can take on the likes of Mercedes in F1 despite their heritage and a natural evolution of that would be to use our expertise we have in [developing] road cars,” said RBR team boss Christian Horner.
Infiniti has a two-year sponsorship deal in place with Red Bull, and they expect the fruits of this collaboration to be on sale within 18 to 24 months from now.
Looking to sell your car? Sell it with Carro.
Infiniti Red Bull? Would Lamborghini have any problems with the Bull part? :p
Since Infiniti is directly under Nissan, and Nissan has a JV studies with Proton why don’t Dato’ Syed Zainal offer our own Proton model to be develop into RedBull-Infiniti car? Should take this oppurtunity. Malaysia boleh spirit, business wise decision.
Can I has Satria Neo Red Bull? *lolcat mode off*
I wonder what technologies developed in the sport of F1 is applicable to road cars other than KERS. KERS is not even an F1 creation
f1 dont say they create..but advancing the technology to the limit eg brake, engine, gear, kers, minyak pelincir, petrol, carbon fiber tech, hydraulic system…..
of course historically F1 technologies were ‘borrowed’ from elsewhere most of it from aviation but in terms of ‘advancing technology’ as you have said.. in what direction is it?
Production car manufacturers are ‘advancing technology’ towards lower emissions, lower fuel consumption. Meeting ever stringent environmental regs and ever stringent crash safety requirements without sacrificing power.
F1’s ‘technology advancement’ is simply about squeezing every ounce of performance from the regs.
Their ‘advancements’ are in completely different directions and so any so called ‘road car product collaboration based on F1’ is always commercial PR horse shite.
Only Le Mans can claim genuine road car tech contribution.
Yup. The way road car development and F1 are going, it’s like east & west. Unless F1 starts adopting smaller engines to race (forced induction like the old days maybe?). But bigwigs like Ferarri & McLaren will make noise. Renault & Cosworth will be happy though.