JULY 25, 2003

Negotiations at Renault getting interesting...

The Renault F1 team yesterday issued a statement saying that Mike Gascoyne was definitely staying put with the team. The interesting thing about this is that there was no comment from Gascoyne attached, a state of affairs which indicates that Mike is not a party to the statement. As such the press release is a strange thing to put out.

There is little doubt that Gascoyne wants out of the situation at Renault - one can ignore statements from team members that this is not the case - but being contractually bound Gascoyne has to be careful. Hence his policy of not talking about the situation. Renault cannot however force Gascoyne to work if he does not wish to do so and so the process now going on is one of negotiating a severance deal. This will no doubt be going on between Renault and Toyota and will involve money. Gascoyne has two years to go on his Renault contract and Renault will want a sum of money to compensate for the loss. Once a deal is negotiated Gascoyne would have to go on six months leave before being able to start at Toyota. The most likely reason for Renault's current attitude therefore is to try to delay that move as long as possible so that Mike cannot work on the design of 2005 car. For that policy to be successful Renault will have to delay things for at least another three or four months.

We believe that despite what Renault is saying, Gascoyne will start work at Toyota within the next nine months...