MOTORSPORT: Back to square one in F1

After last week’s huffing and puffing about rapid change in Formula 1, little is likely to be different when the new world championship begins in Melbourne in less than three weeks.

F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone applauded the decision to revamp qualifying (with cars eliminated at 90-second intervals until a shootout for pole position between the last two drivers) as a step in the right direction, but within a couple of days he announced the change couldn’t be made in time for the Australian Grand Prix.

He said the software team at his Formula One Management company could not revise its system quickly enough for qualifying at Melbourne’s Albert Park on Saturday, March 19.

“We can’t get everything together on time,” Ecclestone told London’s The Independent.

“We are not going to be able to get all the software done in time. So the qualifying changes will probably be [at the fifth round of the championship] in Spain. In Australia it will be the old qualifying format,” he stated.

Reports from the first four-day test of the new season’s F1 cars in Barcelona indicate that efforts to make the V6 hybrid power units 25 per cent louder by splitting the exhausts have largely failed.

Drivers, teams and fans said they did not notice a significant increase in the sound of the hybrids which have been blamed for dwindling interest in the sport the past two years.

Rob Marshall, one of the top engineers at Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo’s team, Red Bull Racing, told Associated Press that F1 would have been better off without the exhaust changes.

“I think the new exhausts are a waste of time,” Marshall said.

“I don’t think it has made it any noisier. I think it just made the car a bit heavier.”

And a corporate move that was thought to have put alcoholic drinks giant Diageo in control of the Force India team may not have had that effect, with embattled Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya insisting he is still in charge.

Diageo has taken control of a company, Watson Ltd (through which Mallya has owned 42.5 per cent of Force India), after it defaulted on a US$135 million bank loan for which it was guarantor.

But Mallya told the Press Trust of India: “Nothing has changed at Force India. I remain team principal and managing director.

“If you take loan, you give some shares as security. That does not mean security has changed. Diageo may have security over my shares, but ownership has not changed.”

Mallya last week stood down as chairman of the United Spirits company already controlled by Diageo, which agreed to continue its Smirnoff vodka brand’s sponsorship of Force India at US$75 million over the next five years.

Diageo has been thought for some months to want to gain control of Force India and link up with Aston Martin.

Mallya has claimed that him resigning as chairman of United Spirits was not related to the F1 team.

“They are not connected at all. In F1, nothing has changed. The ownership pattern remains exactly the same,” Mallya said.

Mallya is known in India as the “king of good times” but has been under financial pressure for several years, especially since the collapse of his Kingfisher Airlines in 2012.

Several banks have declared him a “wilful defaulter” and there have been reports that he is being investigated for money laundering.

Another Indian tycoon who also owns 42.5 per cent of Force India, Roy Subrata Sahara, has been in jail for three years and wants to sell his stake. The other 15 per cent of the team is owned by Dutchman Michiel Mol and his family from its days as Spyker.

Despite the difficulties of Force India’s major owners, German driver Nico Hulkenberg was fastest in the team’s Mercedes-powered VJM08 car on the third day of last week’s testing – the only day on which Ferrari did not top the timesheets.

The second and final pre-season test begins tomorrow and runs until Friday, again in Barcelona.

Now another even for Bathurst
First there was the Bathurst 1000, then the 12-Hour, at Easter there will be a new six-hour race at Mt Panorama… And at the start of December will be a fourth event at Australia’s famous road course.

James O’Brien’s Yeehah Events, which started the 12-Hour (but sold its half-share to V8 Supercars last year) and will run the Easter event, is also behind the four-day Challenge Bathurst scheduled for December 1-4.

It will comprise two days of sprints for up to 120 cars and then two days of regularity running for up to 250 cars.

It is being seen as a likely test event for 12-Hour teams, drivers and tyre manufacturers for the following February’s enduro.

O’Brien’s partner in the latest venture is Greg Evans, who runs the V8 Race drive and ride experience around Australia.

WRC set to hit the heights
Rally Sweden was run on thin ice this month, but now the world rally cars will be in thin air at the third round of the world championship in Mexico at the end of this week.

It is the first gravel rally of the season, taking competitors to what is billed as the “roof of the WRC” at almost 2750 metres above sea level, where engines lose 20-30 per cent of their power because of less oxygen in the air.

The event in central Mexico begins with competition through tunnels in the mining town Guanajuato and contains an 80km stage (the longest WRC stage since 1983 ) on the final day, Sunday.

The total competitive distance is 399km over 21 stages, with ambient temperatures expected to be around 30 degrees Celsius – but up to 50 degrees in the cars.

France’s triple world champions Sebastien Ogier and his co-driver are making their 100th WRC start and already have 34 victories – the first seven of them in Citroens, the subsequent 27 (including Rally Mexico the past three years) in Volkswagen’s Polo R.

VW could equal its record 12 straight WRC round victories in Mexico. It last did that between Rally Australia 2013 and Rally Finland 2014.

Hyundai finds itself only five points behind VW in the manufacturers’ championship after the wet and cold rallies of Monte Carlo and Sweden, with its New Zealand driver Hayden Paddon’s second place last time out equalling his previous in the WRC – on his first rally in the Korean manufacturer’s latest i20.

Rally Mexico is the first of six straight gravel events in the WRC, which this year has a new round in China in September and Rally Australia as the finale in November.

Johnson equals ‘Intimidator’ on 76 wins
NASCAR’s six-time champion Jimmie Johnson has equalled the 76 victories of the late Dale Earnhardt with his win in the second round of this year’s Sprint Cup at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

They are seventh on the all-time NASCAR win list headed by Richard ‘The King’ Petty with 200 victories.

Johnson’s 76 successes have come in 509 races compared to Earnhardt’s 76 from 676 races.

Johnson is still only 40, while Earnhardt was 49 (and a seven-time champion -- like Petty) when he died in a crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.

“It's just such an honour [to equal Earnhardt’s number of wins],” Johnson said.

“With the chaos at the end [of the Atlanta race] I kind of lost sight of that. I remembered it on the victory lap and had to come by and throw three fingers out the window to pay respects to the man.”

Earnhardt, known at ‘The Intimidator’, famously raced with the number 3.

Although they are now equal on the number of wins, Johnson has 208 top-five finishes, 315 top-10s and has led 17,779 laps in his career to Earnhardt’s 281 top-five finishes, 428 top-10s and 25,684 laps led.

And Johnson does not enjoy anything like the popularity of Earnhardt.

Instead it is Dale Earnhardt Junior who is now NASCAR’s most popular driver, despite only 26 wins from 579 Cup race starts and never having finished higher than third in the championship.