MOTORSPORT: A sneak peek into the future

A sneak preview of the shape of things to come from Formula 1 snuck out overnight.

Behind closed doors in Singapore this week the managing director of the sporting side of Formula 1, Ross Brawn, displayed a vision of what a grand prix car could look like in 2021.

While not publicly released, a woman at the seminar, Lynn Smith, posted a photo of the concept car, and Brawn speaking about it, on social media.

While Brawn has long proclaimed he wants to make GP racing more exciting and attractive to fans, the design – most noticeably featuring a narrower, simpler front wing with higher endplates, smoother bodywork around the sidepods and rear-wing endplates that appear to be integrated around the rear wheels – has not been well received by fans.

Even more noticeable was that the car was liveried as a Ferrari – proof that, despite Mercedes having been world champions the past four years and likely again this year, F1 always revolves around the Italian team.

And the design is largely a red herring, again avoiding the issue that what fans want changed is the sound of the engines or power units – something on which Brawn has been rolled by the manufacturers, with any significant change unlikely before at least 2023.

This weekend’s Singapore GP is the 15th round of this year’s world championship, with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton having the biggest lead of the season – 30 points over Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, who has been the most successful driver at the island state’s night race with four wins.

The safety car has been out at every Singapore F1 GP – last year for 12 laps, or 20 per cent of the race, including immediately after the start when both Ferraris were eliminated in a collision with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo – the carsales.com.au global ambassador – has been on the podium in all four of his previous Singapore starts in Renault-powered Red Bulls. While eyeing a repeat this weekend, and having won in Monaco in May – a street race most similar to Singapore – he says Ferrari must be favourite.

“On pure performance Ferrari will have a better package [than Mercedes or Red Bull],” Ricciardo said.

“At best I’d say we (Red Bull) are equal favourites coming into it, but I don’t think we are the favourites, the clear favourites.”

Red Bull has had just one win in the past five GPs but, third in the constructors’ championship behind Mercedes and Ferrari, is still 162 points ahead of the Renault factory team Ricciardo will join next season.

Ferrari confirmed this week that 20-year-old Charles Leclerc, who only made his F1 debut this season, will replace Kimi Raikkonen next year.

The 38-year-old Finn – the scuderia’s last world champion, in 2007, but winless in his second five-year stint with it – will go back to his original team, Swiss-based, Scandinavian-financed and Ferrari-powered Sauber for two years that should enable him to break Rubens Barrichello’s record of 326 GPs.

Talented French youngster Esteban Ocon amazingly looks to be out of a drive next year – with Canadian Lance Stroll set to take his place at Force India after his billionaire father led the buyout of that team – unless Mercedes can engineer a place for him at Williams.

Three weeks after the F1 season concludes in Abu Dhabi in November, the fifth season of the electric open-wheeler global series Formula E will begin in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Unlike F1 fans, followers of Formula E don’t have expectations of the traditional visceral sounds of motor racing.

FE’s new-generation machinery will have double the energy storage of the original, overcoming the need for mid-race car swaps.

BMW will become a full manufacturer team, rather than just a technical partner of America’s Andretti Autosports; Mercedes-related HWA, which built the original Merc Supercar engines for Betty Klimenko’s Erebus Motorsport, will be become the 11th FE team (ahead of a full Mercedes entry in season six); and Nissan will become the first Japanese car-maker to participate in the category.

Claiming to be the global leader in electric road cars, having sold more than 350,000 of its LEAFs, Nissan has bought a stake in French team e.dams, which – in its earlier partnership with Nissan’s alliance partner Renault – won the teams championship in the first three FE seasons. It also holds the record for most wins and pole positions.

FE’s fifth season will comprise 13 races in 12 cities (two yet to be confirmed) on five continents – but still no event in Australia.

And the last six rounds (seven races) from next April to July will clash with F1 GPs, although the FE races are on Saturdays except for the last – the second of a double-header weekend in New York.

The World Rally Championship is back in Turkey for the first time since 2010, with Toyota’s Estonian star Ott Tanak having closed on Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville and Ford M-Sport’s Sebastien Ogier after winning the past two rounds in Finland and Germany.

However, under WRC rules Tanak’s Yaris has reverted to an older-specification engine with less torque and acceleration for this event in scorching heat, on rocky gravel tracks and corkscrew mountain roads.

Belgian Neuville, who has just signed a three-year contract extension with Hyundai, has 172 points, Frenchman Ogier, the world champion of the past five years (four times with Volkswagen), 149 and Tanak 136.

The trio have three wins each, with only three rounds remaining after Turkey – the last being Rally Australia at Coffs Harbour on November 15-18.

Hyundai leads the manufacturers’ championship with 254 points from Toyota on 241, M-Sport Ford 224 and Citroen a distant fourth on 159.

The IndyCar series concludes at Sonoma, California, with Brisbane-born New Zealander Scott Dixon a short-priced favourite to clinch his fifth title.

American Alex Rossi, like Dixon powered by Honda, is his main challenger, while Penske-Chevrolet pair Will Power – the Toowoomba ace who won this year’s Indianapolis 500 – and America reigning series champion Josef Newgarden remain mathematical chances.

The Penske pair, tied on 511 points (compared with Dixon’s 598 and Rossi’s 569), both need to win with Dixon finishing 24th or lower at Sonoma and Rossi 10th or worse.

That’s highly unlikely, meaning Roger Penske’s 500th win since he began as a team owner in 1966 with American driver Mark Donohue will have to come at Melbourne’s Sandown 500 or the first round of NASCAR’s Chase for the season title in Las Vegas if it is to be this weekend.

Brad Keselowski won the delayed Brickyard 400 for Penske last Monday, completing a hat-trick this year for ‘The Captain’ at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway after Power’s successes on both the road course and the famed superspeedway.

If Rossi wins Sunday’s double IndyCar points race (with 100 for the win, one for pole position, one for leading a lap and two for leading the most laps), Dixon needs to finish second.

Don Panoz, the American behind the Race of 1000 Years that ushered in this millennium in Adelaide, died this week of cancer, aged 83.

Panoz made his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry, most famously with the development of the nicotine patch, and only became seriously involved in motor racing in the last 20-odd years of his life.

He built front-engined sports cars that took on the more typical rear-engined sports prototypes, created the American Le Mans Series and championed the DeltaWing concept with half the horsepower, half the weight, half the aerodynamic drag and lower fuel consumption but all the performance of other prototypes.

Cars built by the flagging IndyCar constructor G Force he bought won the Indianapolis 500 four times, including for Roger Penske in 2003.

A final project to develop an all-electric prototype for Panoz’s favourite race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, was aborted in the final stage of his life.

Among the many tributes for Panoz, who was of Italian descent and a member of America’s Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame, Australian David Brabham said: “What a character he was.

“His drive and passion for what he believed in was incredible. Who would have thought of building a front-engine sportscar in 1997!

“I was honoured to drive the Panoz roadsters on the racetracks around the world and we sure shook the establishment by beating the likes of Audi and BMW with his little team from Brasleton, Georgia. Without Don Panoz sports car racing would not be what it is today.

“His commitment to bring in the manufacturers, privateers and align with the ACO (the Le Mans organiser) was a stroke of genius and it paved the way for some of the best racing the USA had ever seen with ALMS – a series for the fans.”