Remember all of those Red Bull Formula 1 quit threats last year amid its drama with Renault? Yeah, we all do.
Well Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz has now said that was all a load of rubbish and the F1 team never properly considered quitting.
An under-powered and unreliable Renault engine in 2015 caused the relationship between Red Bull and the French supplier to break down, becoming one of the biggest story-lines of the year.
It all stemmed from Red Bull not being happy with what they were getting and deciding to look elsewhere, but Mercedes and Ferrari turned them down.
So that put them in a tricky situation and the quit threats began for both Red Bull and Toro Rosso too, which would’ve clearly been a big hit to F1 if it did actually happen.
Red Bull eventually came crawling back to Renault, re-branding the V6 Turbos as ‘TAG Heuer’, while Toro Rosso went for year-old Ferrari engines.
After all of that palaver, drama and talk, it turns out Red Bull’s threats were never serious. Here’s what Mateschitz told Spanish newspaper Marca:
“Really, we never thought about it. Although, in theory, there were always circumstances that could have made us go down that route, like for example, the obvious case of not having been able to secure a power unit supplier.”
Of course, Red Bull didn’t emerge from the situation too badly, as they’ve won two races so far this season – one each for Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo.
Those TAG Heuer engines are clearly better than the Renault ones they had before… wait a minute.