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Red Bull to run TAG Heuer-branded engines next season

After a drawn-out and very public effort to switch to a different engine supplier, Red Bull Racing will once again be running under Renault power next season. Only it won't be labeled as a Renault. Instead, it will be branded by TAG Heuer. Now if you're thinking that TAG Heuer was in the McLaren camp, you were right up until today's announcement. One of McLaren's oldest partners, the watchmaker jumped ship to join up with Red Bull instead, ostensibly replacing Casio as the team's official timekeeper. Now here's where it gets a little tricky: Mansour Ojjeh and his Techniques d'Avant Garde holding company remain a major stakeholder in McLaren. The firm owned Tag Heuer from 1985 to 1999; now its former watch brand is leaving for Red Bull. This isn't the first time that the TAG name has transferred from one F1 team to another, nor is it the first time we'll see its name replace that of a major automaker on an F1 engine. Techniques d'Avant Garde previously partnered with Williams before Ron Dennis took over in Woking and convinced Ojjeh to come on board. That partnership saw TAG work with Porsche on a successful F1 engine program that won three drivers' championships (with Niki Lauda and Alain Prost), two constructors' titles, and 25 grands prix. While unusual, the deal is hardly unprecedented. Aside from the McLaren-TAG-Porsche arrangement, Sauber once ran Ferrari engines under the brand of its sponsor Petronas (which has long since switched to Mercedes). For another example, the 1998 world championship saw Benetton running Renault engines under the Playlife name, while Williams rebranded its version as Mecachrome, as the French automaker shifted its priorities in F1 much as it is right now. The announcement still leaves a few questions unanswered, however. For one, will Red Bull continue running TAG Heuer-branded engines made by Renault (or another supplier) after 2016? And what does this spell for Infiniti, Renault's sister-brand that has sponsored the team for the past several years? Infiniti declined to comment, but we're told there'll be some sort of announcement early next week. Red Bull Racing to drive forward with TAG Heuer power unit in 2016 From the milliseconds that separate victory from defeat to the finely balanced and perfectly measured rhythm of a racing engine, in motorsport timing is everything.

The Infiniti Q60 Black S gets an F1 KERS system

This is the Infiniti Q60 Black S that will be debuting at the Geneva Motor Show, sporting some intense bodywork and an F1-inspired powertrain. It exists to draw a closer parallel between the Renault F1 program and the Infiniti brand – a relationship that's surely easier to understand in Europe than it is here, but so be it. Other than the wild bodywork, which includes a heavily sculpted front fascia, bigger side sills, two howitzer-sized exhaust pipes, and a massive rear wing, there's the F1-inspired KERS system. Exactly what that will be is up in the air; the F1 system is complex and expensive. While Infiniti says they want to engineer a road-going solution that's as similar as possible to the F1 KERS system, it's likely it'll be watered down a bit for production. View 12 Photos All in all, the 3.0-liter, twin-turbo V6 and the KERS system should combine to produce about 500 horsepower. That's all well and good, if it makes it out of concept car purgatory. Remember the Q50 Eau Rouge, the last Infiniti that got car enthusiast's undivided attention? Well, it got canceled. We're not sure what the appeal of an F1 tie-in would be to American shoppers, so who knows if the Black S will emerge as a rest-of-world special, or at all. In any event, we should have more details around Geneva, so stay tuned. Image Credit: Live photos copyright 2017 Drew Phillips / Autoblog.com Geneva Motor Show Infiniti Coupe Concept Cars Performance Videos Original Video 2017 Geneva Motor Show infiniti q60

Infiniti Q30 spied again

The Infiniti Q30 is back in the news thanks to the imminent debut of the QX30 Concept as its crossover counterpart at the upcoming 2015 Geneva Motor Show. The siblings are Infiniti's entrants into the popular premium compact ranks, and the standard hatchback was recently spotted in Europe with the least amount of concealment yet. Granted, this tester is still pretty heavy camouflaged, but this is a lot better aesthetically than the previous garbage-bag-covered look. While the pattern makes specifics hard to discern, the translation from the motor show stand to the road appears to be leaving the Q30 Concept's styling largely intact. Up front, the squinting headlights and swollen-rectangle shape of the grille remain similar, and while they are pretty hard to spot, the slashes down the side are faintly visible from some angles. The rear hews even closer to the original design with a comparable shape for the taillights and hatch, but exhausts are much smaller on this test car. Underneath the skin, the Q30 reportedly shares its platform with the Mercedes-Benz GLA-Class, and the engine is also expected to be the 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder available in Mercedes' compact lineup. Official details should start spilling out soon, though, because Infiniti wants production of the hatchback to begin in 2015 at the Sunderland plant in the UK. A launch for the US market is expected in 2016. Featured Gallery Infiniti Q30 Spy Shots Image Credit: CarPix Spy Photos Infiniti Hatchback Luxury infiniti q30 infiniti q30 concept