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Originally Posted by The Badger
Its amazing just how far a check from Deiter Matschitz (Red Bull) will go .....
Im sure if he wanted , he could afford to put Micheal Schumacher in that car . His pockets are infinate to what he wants .... I used to work for him , and he is one hell of gentleman ..... nice man , he spent 50 to 60 million euro on restoring the only presureised Douglas DC-6B still in service today ..... VIP , the works . I worked on it too , anything you wanted ..... ask .
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Oh I know that money is no object with Dieter. The real issue is how principled Henri wants to be. There is no doubt that he is fiercely nationalistic, and the question may be whether he wants to keep it his way or be more successful. I'm not totally sure that we can predict the outcome to that.
Anyway, the big IF right now is whether that rumour has legs. If it does, I would wager Henri would push for French pilots with Red Bull backing first. Of course, given the freedom of funds, perhaps he can just pick who he wants and they will find themselves with Red Bull backing...
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Originally Posted by HORNDAWG
First off, I think you should compare apples to apples, ie; GM, Acura, Aston Martin, Audi, Ferrari, Porsche, Peugeot. How many of these do you see letting loose of control of their product? None! It is not low risk to these entities.
As to your tuner reference, once again, how many of these do you see being tuned by outside sources? Zero, if they wish to retain any relationship with the Mfg!
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To be fair, a good chunk of those programs have much or all of the manufacturing work done by outside contractors. After all, AMR is really Prodrive and has little to do with Aston, the manufacturer, beyond factory blessing. The Corvette program is handled by Pratt and Miller and Katech, Ferrari's heavily subcontracted to Michelotto and N-Technology, etc. What they all do have in common, however, is that the factory has explicitly blessed them. On that note, you are definitely correct - and that is a critical point. They don't let just anyone run fast and loose with their name and branding, because they have a lot invested in that branding being connected to successful performance. In fact, if I were Aston, I would be a little worried right now about the impression some of the Prodrive GT cars are giving of the brand. Audi had the major embarrassment of the Swiss Spirit Lola project which I doubt they would be willing to repeat, and I'm sure Chevrolet/Corvette would not want the same issue to occur with their very successful brand.