Tatuus Renault (2003)

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“Createur de Competition” The car that sparked off the World Series by Renault Ready for BOSS GP and F1 Interserie When the Spanish Formula Renault Championship ceased to exist at the end of 2007, Spanish promoter RPM quickly took over to launch the Open Fortuna by Nissan series for 2-litre single-seaters. Ambitious though he was, little did RPM’s founder – the father of the eponymous former Formula One racer Jaime Alguersuari – know that eventually this local Spanish series that launched the career of its 1999 champion Fernando Alonso would spin off into the World Series by Renault circus that travelled Europe from 2005 to the end of the next decade. Open Fortuna by Nissan was originally based on Coloni chassis and the Nissan SR20 engine before upgrading to Dallara T02 monocoques and Nissan’s 3-litre VQ30 powerplant in 2002, as the series was relaunched as World Series by Nissan. One year later, Renault started its Formula Renault V6 Eurocup in support of Eurosport’s Super Racing Weekends that also bolstered the European Touring Car Championship and the FIA GT Championship. For this, Renault adopted Tatuus chassis and the Nissan 3.5-litre VQ35 engine that by now had been made famous by the Nissan 350Z road car. As a result, Renault had created a direct competitor to the World Series by Nissan – at a time when Nissan had been wholly owned by Renault since 1999! After two years of internal cannibalism, Renault wisely decided to pull out of the Eurosport weekends to launch its own motorsport marketing extravaganza. This was done by effectively swallowing up RPM’s World Series by Nissan series to create the World Series by Renault, that would be headlined by the new Formula Renault 3.5 based around a Dallara T05 chassis and Nissan’s 3.5-litre engine. To complete the show that continued to be promoted by Alguersuari’s RPM, the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup and the Eurocup Mégane Trophy were added to form an impressive weekend line-up. This particular monocoque is chassis 025 from the series that Italian manufacturer Tatuus created for the Formula Renault V6 Eurocup that was held in 2003-2004. Several cars continued their competitive lives in the Formula Renault V6 Asia series that lived on between 2006 and 2009. Neel Jani, Jaime Melo Jr, Jaap van Lagen and Pastor Maldonado were among the drivers, while José María López and Giorgio Mondini were crowned champions. The competing teams – from DAMS to Jenzer, Cram and EuroInternational – failed record their chassis history across those two seasons, but a few years later, this chassis was pressed into service as a Formula One show car in 2007 when ING joined Renault as its new F1 title sponsor. This grippy, slick-tyred machine from the burgeoning early-21st-century single-seater era oozes rock-and-roll, and could be yours for a second career in today’s ‘modern historic’ formula series such as BOSS GP and F1 Interserie. Apart from that, it’s an equally effective tool for any single-seater trackday. Included in the sale are an engine preheater, an external starter and a set of spare rims.