Your whole post is simply put clutching at straws. No offense intended. The way I see it is that if you include R&D costs all the engine manufacturers make a loss. However that is possibly lessened for Ferrari and Mercedes because they have multiple customers and Honda already makes and Renault will make a bigger loss from next year because Honda supplies free engines and Renault will have no customers from next year. Now it's possible that the expenditure after all net inflow from customer teams are similar but we don't really know that because we don't know the R&D costs. We know the HPP accounts (for both Formula1 and FormulaE) but Honda, Renault and Ferrari are part of larger divisions so no breakup is available.Neno wrote: ↑01 Sep 2020, 00:01Ill find source for you dont you worry
EDIT: Dammit, I cant find it now, but I will eventually. Overall article was about profits out engine deals and how Mercedes isnt really making any money out customer deals. And they are in their word just off setting price for engine development they did for their own car which included making good engine. So they overall selling engines at loss and trying increasing number of customer deals to break even. Ill find it eventually.
In one of articles I found are this quotes:
"The engine development costs big money, and the engine departments of all the current suppliers are loss making entities which shouldn't be the case, so we're trying to contain that."
"Wolff points out that engine suppliers are being required to sell this equipment at lower prices than ever before." Which is BS. If you read further down my post you will realize Honda really can't sell engines to any other team because they are contractually obligated to worship RB an AT and Renault only in that time had Mclaren under engine deal so he really one spoke about thing he knows most - mercedes.
Also there was article soon after that from autosport which i found btw, about Renault and Abiteboul who confirmed they also arent making any money out engine deal and their current engine price is dictated by cap limitiation.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/14669 ... istraction
But while Mercedes has always emphasised the benefits of having multiple customers, Renault F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul said there would be no downsides to his firm going alone.
"From an economic perspective, there is absolutely no impact and nothing in it, because we sell, more or less, at a cost due to the price cap limitation
Now even without my article I searched if you read between lines you should conclude that Merc is satisfied about selling at loss due more customer engine deals because in reality selling engines for them isnt about making profit, but Renault even with same thinking had set price on engine and they werent really willing "sell" below it.
But Mclaren found that Merc deal is better than Renault deal and they were willing to use tokens on engine and do chassis integration hassle. Which to me is another suggestion that deal with Merc was a lot cheaper, again suggesting selling engine well below what "best" engine on grid is worth it.
Also I smell BS from Cyril's statement which was made to save face after both McLaren and RBR leaving but that's purely on Renault for years of underinvestment and poor reliability and performance.
I simply see McLaren were offered a superior product at a lower or near enough equivalent price with a company they have a long and successful history with who are also UK based. Seems a no brainer to me.