Cosworth Reveals Contacts with Red Bull

Cosworth has recently lost a partner in the Formula One championship, after announcing that their engine partnership with Lotus will be terminated at the end of this season. And the situation could turn for the worse in the months to come, as at least two other teams that are currently powered by Cosworth engines, HRT F1 and Virgin Racing, are in doubt (financially) for the 2011 season.

Apart from Williams, who have recently confirmed they will continue their partnership with the independent Northampton based engine maker in 2011, there is no other team that seems at least interested in signing a deal with Cosworth. However, according to the company's managing director Tim Routsis, the situation may take a positive turn in the near future.

And that's because it seems the Cosworth bosses seem to have contacted Red Bull Racing a while back.

“There were several contacts with Red Bull,” said Routsis in an interview with Italian magazine Autosprint. According to Routsis, the discussion took place before the 2010 season, when the Austrian team was uncertain of the potential of the Cosworth powerplants.

“But we were at a disadvantage, because we had no evidence about how our engine was going to debut. I am convinced that if we had been able to wind the clocks forward by 13 months, things with Red Bull would have gone differently.”

Unfortunately, it seems that those contacts will not reopen any kind of negotiations for the 2011 campaign, as Red Bull's technical director Adrian Newey recently confirmed his team is on the verge of extending their deal with Renault for the upcoming campaign. The design guru argued his team's move by the fact that McLaren had vetoed against a potential Red Bull-Mercedes deal, while an agreement with Ferrari would not be viable.