Red Bull’s Renault engines are to be renamed Infiniti for this upcoming season
which will give the current world champion team’s budget an increase of at least £7 million. This is good news for Red Bull as the new engine is to be essentially provided for free, aside from the branding the engines will be the same. The cost of customer engine supplies in Formula 1 is currently set at 8 million Euros and this is a standard agreed with across all the teams. This extra cash that would have previously been used for the engine can now be tied up with other things such as making improvements and modifications to the car. This cost only covers between 4%-5% of the total budget for Red Bull but it is is still a significant amount of cash to put towards development work, hopefully we’ll see better performance out of the car from this extra money. Red Bull Renault’s new car looks the top of the field at the moment, having been one of the cars with the longest practice time available, whereas their rival constructor team from last year, McLaren, haven’t had as long to test their new car and get to grips with all the new data and technologies that they’ve had implemented for this new season. This year however, Red Bull’s rival team looks to be Ferrari, with Alonso just narrowly missing out on the drivers’ championship. It’s set to be a battle from the first race and we’ll have to wait and find out which car really has the most power and who can harness that power to its fullest. The Red Bull-Infiniti deal was to give the engine brand more exposure to the global market, competing against such other brands as Jaguar and Mercedes. The first Formula 1 grand prix is only a few weeks away now, we’re all waiting with baited breath, and the excitement is nicely bubbling at this point, with scraps of news streaming in about different teams and their worries and fears. It won’t be long now before we can put our speculations to rest and see how each team performs in the start of the 2011 Formula 1 battle. Keep your racing skills in check by trying out our brand new London Tower Bridge karting track, or re-visit a firm favourite and shave off those last few remaining split seconds to show you have what it takes to one day become an F1 driver yourself. So book now and enjoy the wait for the new season.