MOTORSPORT: Big changes on way in F1

Only two points separate the Mercedes drivers in the Formula 1 World Championship following last night's Italian GP at Monza, where Daniel Ricciardo made the pass of the season.

Meantime, seismic change appears afoot for the world's premier motorsport category, with feverish reports of an imminent change in the ownership of F1, perhaps this week.

Nico Rosberg’s victory in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza was his seventh this season, one more than triple world champion teammate Lewis Hamilton, who still has a narrow lead on the points table with seven races remaining.

Unlike Hamilton, the Ferraris made a great start from the second row at Monza and Sebastian Vettel delivered the Italian team its first podium in five races.

While that delighted the home fans, it was Australian Daniel Ricciardo’s brilliant move to overtake Valtteri Bottas that will have thrilled the more objective world.

For all the fuss about his 18-year-old teammate Max Verstappen, who undoubtedly is an enormous talent, Ricciardo outqualified and outraced the Dutch wonderboy at Monza and his pass is being acclaimed as the best of the season.

Generational change is underway in F1’s driver line-up. Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne will replace Jenson Button at McLaren-Honda next year and a Canadian kid, Lance Stroll, might take the retiring Felipe Massa’s place at Williams, which may end up being owned by his billionaire father, Lawrence, the man behind the Tommy Hilfiger fashion brand.

Already new stars are emerging – Pascal Wehrlein, a Mercedes protégé, and perhaps Esteban Ocon, as well as Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Junior, coincding with more aggressive cars with wider tyres on the drawing boards for next year.

But it is on the F1 ownership front that the biggest shake-up could be coming.
American media mogul John Malone could be announced in the next couple of days as the new owner of a substantial stake in the business.

Indications are that Malone would install one of Rupert Murdoch’s long-time lieutenants, fellow American Chase Carey, to run it, perhaps in a transitional handover from 85-year-old Englishman Bernie Ecclestone.

As so often in F1 though, the scenario may yet turn out to be quite different. There are suggestions of other parties as buyers – including another American, Stephen Ross, in association with Qatari interests, and Silver Lake, a private equity company that owns International Management Group (IMG).

F1’s biggest shareholder for a decade has been another private equity outfit, CVC, which has scaled back its stake to about 35 per cent while minting massive returns on what it paid.

Ecclestone and his family speak for about 14 per cent of the shares. He was once quoted saying he would bow out as the day-to-day chief if CVC departed, but it is hard to imagine him taking his hands off the wheel.

The well-informed business editor of Murdoch’s Sky News in Britain, Mark Kleinman, has reported that Malone’s Liberty organisation would want 100 per cent of F1 eventually but that he may start with 20 per cent.

That may be necessary in any case as the world governing body of motorsport, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), may choose to revisit the century-long commercial rights its former president Max Mosley granted his old mate Ecclestone in any change of control.

And, while powerful manufacturers Mercedes and Ferrari appear strongly in favour of a sale of F1 to a media empire, hoping it would exploit its commercial potential even more than Ecclestone has, it ought be remembered that this has happened once before – in the late 1990s, and the buyer, Germany’s Kirch group, ended up going bust.

The value of the business – which former team owner Eddie Jordan famously has said Ecclestone previously sold three or four times yet never owned it in the first place – may already have waned.

A couple of times it has been touted for flotation on the Singapore stock market at $US10 billion ($A13.2 billion at today’s exchange rate), yet the figure being put on it in the reports of a Liberty buyout is $US8.5 billion.

Ricciardo top of the overtaking class
Fifth place after podiums in Hungary, Germany and Belgium may not look flash, but Monza was always going to be a tough track for Red Bull Racing and Daniel Ricciardo finishing one place ahead of where he started was a stirling job.

Ricciardo modestly said post-race that his move on Bottas was “really enjoyable”, but to his team boss Christian Horner it was “amazing”.

“He came from so far back [to squeeze inside the Williams-Mercedes of Bottas],” Horner said.

“His hand gesture afterwards summed it up … he looked pretty pleased with himself.”

And Ricciardo, who said the Italian race had been mainly about “damage limitation” in Red Bull’s tussle with Ferrari for second place in the constructors’ championship, added: “It was great fun and felt nice to come from so far back and make it stick.

“We altered the strategy a bit [during the race], which meant I had the supersoft tyres on at that stage.

“It was great work by the team to give me the chance to make the move.

“Our performance so far this season, and the result we have achieved here [behind the two Mercedes and two Ferraris], makes me really excited heading into Singapore, where I think we can challenge for the top spots [on September 18].”

Verstappen finished seventh, nine seconds behind Ricciardo, in Italy, having dropped to 11th at the start.

Three of Rosberg’s wins this season have come after poor starts by teammate Hamilton.

He disappeared into the distance at Monza while Hamilton clawed his way back after being swamped off the grid, which he attributed to an inconsistent Mercedes clutch.

The Ferraris of Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen made two tyre stops to the one each of the Mercedes pair.

The Williams team regained fourth place in the constructors’ championship with the sixth and ninth places of Bottas and Massa against the eighth and 10th places of Force India’s Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg.

Perez, who it was thought may have taken his huge Mexican sponsorship to Williams to replace Massa or to Renault’s languishing factory team, is staying at Force India for another season, after which he may be eying Raikkonen’s seat at Ferrari.

Jenson Button says he’s not retiring but will become an ambassador next season for McLaren-Honda. While Button finished a most creditable 12th (considering his machinery) at Monza, teammate Fernando Alonso some distance behind him in 14th yet set the fastest lap of the race in the closing stages.

Formula 1 World Championship driver standings after 14 of 21 rounds – 1. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 250 points; 2. Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 248; 3. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 161; 4. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Ferrari) 143; 5. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 136; 6. Max Verstappen (Netherlands, Red Bull-Renault) 121; 7. Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Williams-Mercedes) 70; 8. Sergio Perez (Mexico, Force India-Mercedes) 62; 9. Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 46; 10. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 41; 11. Fernando Alonso (Spain, McLaren-Honda) 30; 12. Carlos Sainz Junior (Spain, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 30; 13. Romain Grosjean (France, Haas-Ferrari) 28; 14. Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 23; 15. Jenson Button (GB, McLaren-Honda) 17; 16. Kevin Magnussen (Denmark, Renault) 6; 17. Pascal Wehrlein (Germany, Manor-Mercedes) 1; 18. Stoffel Vandoorne (Belgium, McLaren-Honda)  1.

F1 constructor standings – 1. Mercedes 498 points; 2. Red Bull-Renault 290; 3. Ferrari 279; 4. Williams-Mercedes 111; 5. Force India-Mercedes 108; 6. McLaren-Honda 48; 7.  Toro Rosso-Ferrari 45; 8. Haas-Ferrari 28; 9. Renault 6; 10. Manor-Mercedes 1.

Uphill battle from here for Power
Will Power’s hopes of recapturing the IndyCar title he won two years ago have taken a hit.

Power crashed out at two-thirds distance at Watkins Glen in upstate New York after contact with Ganassi team driver Charlie Kimball and may have suffered concussion.

His title rival – and Penske teammate – Simon Pagenaud finished seventh to go 43 points clear.

Only the double-points finale remains on September 18 at Sonoma in California, where a maximum 104 points can be scored.

New Zealand’s four-time series champion Scott Dixon won the Watkins Glen race for Ganassi and is third in this season’s championship, but not in title contention.

In America’s biggest race series, NASCAR’s Sprint Cup, the most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Junior, has been ruled out for the rest of the 36-round season ending on November 20 because of continuing ‘concussion-like symptoms’.

Earnhardt has not raced for four weeks and Hendrick Motorsports will continue to use briefly-retired four-time champion Jeff Gordon and 23-year-old Alex Bowman in his Chevrolet for the rest of the year.

Back-to-back WEC wins for Webber
Mark Webber has won with Porsche in the World Endurance Championship for the second straight round.

Webber drove the opening stint of the six-hour race in Mexico City before handing over to New Zealander Brendon Hartley, and German veteran Timo Bernhard then took the 919 Hybrid to the chequered flag – a minute clear of an Audi R18.

A Toyota TS050 was third and the second Porsche fourth – and its drivers Romain Dumas (France), Neel Jani (Switzerland) and Marc Lieb (Germany) are 41-point leaders in the drivers’ championship that the other Porsche trio won last year.

Porsche leads this year’s manufacturers’ championship with 201 points to Audi’s 158 and Toyota’s 112.

Veteran sports car correspondent John Dagys reported that Audi “was again unable to capitalise on its performance over Porsche in the [Mexican] race”.

Dagys said the Audi in which Brazilian Lucas Di Grassi diced with Webber in the early stages dropped out in the fourth hour when a left-front wheel bearing failure sent British driver Oliver Jarvis into the barriers.

Toyota’s second TS050 also struck trouble, out in the second hour with hybrid failure.

Porsche has now chalked up 11 wins with the 919 Hybrid since its debut in 2014, with six of those scored by Webber and his co-drivers. However, success has eluded that trio at the Le Mans 24-Hour as Porsche has triumphed in that classic the past two years.

Variety the spice of World Rallycross
The World Rallycross Championship has now had five different winners in eight rounds this year.

The latest is 27-year-old Swede Johan Kristoffersson for the new Volkswagen RX Sweden team created through the merger of Marklund Motorsport and Volkwagen Team Sweden.

Kristoffersson took the win at Loheac in France in his Polo RX ahead of Norway’s Andreas Bakkerud in the second of the Ford Focus RS RX’s run by American Ken Block’s Hoonigan Racing Division. Block also made the final.
Third was France’s nine-time world rally champion Sebastien Loeb for Team Peugeot-Hansen.

Reigning champion Petter Solberg, another former WRC champion and World RX title winner in both the previous seasons, was fourth in his Citroen and extended his lead over Audi’s Swedish ace Mattias Ekstrom to five points.

Ekstrom led after the four qualifying rounds but had a puncture in his semi-final and did not make the final.

However, his EKS team still leads the teams’ championship by 19 points from Team Peugeot-Hansen.

Webber protégé for Jaguar Formula E seat
Mark Webber’s New Zealand protégé Mitch Evans is set to be named this week as one of the drivers for Jaguar’s new team in the Formula E electric open-wheeler series.

Jaguar has developed its car for the season starting in Hong Kong next month with Williams Advanced Engineering.

Evans, a multiple winner in the GP2 series that is a support category to F1 in Europe, has been among four drivers testing recently for Jaguar, whose other driver will be Northern Irishman Adam Carroll.

Webber raced for Jaguar in his second and third seasons in F1 – 2003 and 2004.
Ford sold that team to Red Bull and it became the outfit with which Webber won nine GPs and which Daniel Ricciardo has been in since 2014, winning three GPs – all of them in his first season there.