Renault Will Not Supply Customer Engines in 2004

Renault president Patrick Faure said today that the French manufacturer will not meet FIA demands to supply another team with cheap customer engines in 2004 - but said they will do so in the future.

The French team decided this week to ditch their radical wide-angle engine concept for next year and Faure says it is important they get the new powerplant right before supplying other teams.

"Obviously we'll be ready to supply another team in the future with three conditions," Faure said. "The first one and the most important one is that we want to have our engine completely reliable and powerful because the first target we have is our engine, for us.

"When we are ready, we are absolutely ready to supply another team under two conditions. The first one is not to lose money. We don't want to make money, but we don't want to lose so it means selling it at a reasonable price.

"The second one is that we probably want to be not only a supplier but a partner of the second team, and to be able to have with them a few possible deals on trying some young engineers, young drivers or whatever.

"So being in a position of partner more than in the position of pure supplier, but we are ready to supply another team, let's say from 2005 or 2006 onwards."

Faure said Renault have been in talks with teams already about supplying engines, but added that the estimated $10 million (USD) price would have to be increased to make it economically viable.

"Well, some teams started to discuss with us, but we are not ready yet," he added. "We want to finalise our engine before thinking of supplying a second one. This is why there will be no second team in 2004.

"I think that having made our calculations we are maybe more expensive than the other ones probably, but for 10 million we are losing money. In our calculations, to not lose money we should be around 15 million, maybe slightly less, but very slightly. At 10 we are losing money."