Friday March 17th, 2000

The return of Renault to Formula One will heat up the pace among major carmakers and make competition even tougher for privately-run teams.

The French carmaker's announcement that it was buying the Italian Benetton team in a $120 million deal was welcomed by Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone on Friday as an arrangement "that makes everyone happy".

"Renault are happy because they are coming back; that is marvellous for Formula One. Benetton are happy because they will remain as a team for two years," Ecclestone was quoted as saying in the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper.

The Formula One grid will be increased next season to 12 teams with the arrival of Japanese carmaker Toyota.

In 2002 Renault will appear in their own right as replacements on the grid for the Italian team owned by the Benetton family and manufacturing empire.

Renault supplied Benetton and Williams with engines between 1992 and 1997 and won a total of six constructors' titles and five drivers' championships.

They quit in 1997 but are now entering with their own colours and in-house chassis and engine.

Benetton, along with the Jordan team run by Irish entrepreneur Eddie Jordan, were one of only two top tier teams without an exclusive engine deal with a major carmaker.

Jordan, third in last year's championship behind Ferrari and McLaren, are now the only ones.

The team has Mugen-Honda engines but Honda itself is committed to a partnership with BAR.

Eddie Jordan has in the past rejected approaches to buy his British-based team and has also voiced concern about what could happen if the carmakers decide F1 no longer fits in with their commercial strategies.

Who Owns What

Ferrari are owned by FIAT, Mercedes-Benz have a significant stake in McLaren and Ford own the Jaguar team.

Williams have sole use of BMW engines and the French Prost team have a similar arrangement with Peugeot.

That leaves the Swiss-based Sauber team, who have a cooperation agreement with Ferrari to use their re-badged engines, and struggling Arrows and Minardi.

Arrows, along with Benetton this season, are powered by the Renault-based Supertec while Formula One paupers Minardi, who have been inching closer to a buyout by Spain's Telefonica, have to make do with an outdated and re-badged Ford engine.

The Renault move to owning a team, rather than just providing engines, places them on a par with Ford, who went down a similar road in buying Stewart last year, Ferrari and the eventual Toyota team.

Not long ago Formula One was full of privately-run teams such as Tyrrell and Brabham.

The modern reality is that competing now requires hefty backing by major business concerns and the costs are growing as carmakers pump money into beating their rivals and promoting their road vehicles.

"Competing is all about winning and if you have a budget that's less than others then you can't expect miracles," said Benetton boss Luciano Benetton on Thursday.

The difficulty for the likes of Minardi and Arrows will be to secure a competitive engine in future in a sport dominated by massive industrial concerns.

Their hope will be that at least some of the manufacturers make engines available to others.

"I'm sorry for Minardi who deserve and have a good car," Ecclestone said. "I wanted to see to it that the manufacturers might supply at least two teams each. It would be fair."