MOTORSPORT: Big weekend for Webber, Ricciardo too

While Australia’s top national race drivers vie for victory in the Bathurst 1000 on Sunday our international stars will be in the hunt for glory abroad.

Mark Webber is eyeing a hat-trick of victories in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) round at Fuji in Japan, driving one of Porsche’s 919 2-litre V4 sports cars.

Russia’s Formula 1 track in Sochi is the nearest thing to the Singapore street circuit where Daniel Ricciardo finished second just three weeks ago in the Renault-powered Red Bull RB11 that has not been a match for the Mercedes and Ferraris elsewhere.

Porsche’s top priority is winning the manufacturers’ title in the WEC but that also could mean a first drivers’ championship for Webber in any form of car racing.

Porsche heads Volkswagen group stablemate Audi by 36 points on the manufacturers’ scoreboard, with a maximum of 132 points to be collected from the remaining three six-hour races  – 44 points each at Fuji, then Shanghai in China on November 1 and Bahrain in the Middle East on November 21.

Toyota goes into this weekend’s race on its home ground (the Fuji circuit is owned by the Japanese manufacturer) 119 points behind Porsche.

While the 919 that Webber co-drives with German Timo Bernhard and New Zealander Brendon Hartley won the past two rounds at the Nurburgring in Germany and the Circuit of the Americas in Texas, Porsche already has had a hat-trick – starting with its triumph at the Le Mans 24-Hour in France in June.

Porsche ran a third 919 there and it was driven to victory by German F1 ace Nico Hulkenberg, New Zealander Earl Bamber and Brit Nick Tandy.

The recently-revised F1 calendar for next year, with the new grand prix Azerbaijan clashing with Le Mans on June 19, will prevent Hulkenberg defending that crown.

Audi won the WEC’s first two six-hour races this year, at Silverstone in Britain and Spa in Belgium, and its top trio – Marcel Fassler (Switzerland), Andre Lotterer (Germany) and Benoit Treluyer (France) – still head the WEC drivers’ championship on 113 points after three other podiums.

Webber and his co-drivers are 10 points behind, while Porsche’s other regular trio – Neel Jani (Switzerland), Marc Lieb (Germany) and Romain Dumas (France) – are third on 77.5 points.

Porsche has vowed not to invoke team orders between its two crews unless absolutely necessary – surely music to Webber’s ears, after years of the favouritism towards Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull Racing in F1, provided he gets to clinch a WEC drivers’ title.

There are a maximum 26 points a race to be scored by the drivers – or 78 by the season’s conclusion in Bahrain.

Webber is fond of Fuji, at the foot of Japan’s most famous mountain, despite Vettel running into him after a safety car period there in the 2008 Japanese GP, which denied him his first F1 victory.

“It’s a track that’s got some technical challenges, which I like,” Webber said.

“The last sector is quite a challenge, car balance is important in the corners and you also have to get the technique on braking right to be able to put everything together.”

In the WEC’s Le Mans GTE class Ferrari has only a two-point lead over Porsche after the German make’s one-two results in the past two races. Aston Martin in 59 points behind Ferrari, with 132 points to play for in that category too.

Sunday’s Fuji race will telecast by Eurosport, which can be viewed via Fox Sports.

Red Bull’s RB11 ‘a very good car’
Even without the Renault upgrades originally scheduled for this weekend, the Russian GP is Daniel Ricciardo’s best hope of a victory among the five remaining rounds of the F1 World Championship.

Yet the West Australian is not a great fan of the circuit in Sochi which F1 is visiting for the second year.

“It’s 90-degree corner, straight, 90-degree corner, straight… So, in terms of driver satisfaction, it’s a little flat,” Ricciardo said of the 5.848km track, partly on public roads, in the city that hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics.

However, unlike Singapore, where he had to settle for second place behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel as the usually-dominant Mercedes cars had an off-day, there is plenty of room for overtaking. It also will suit his teammate, Daniil Kyvat, a Russian – but from Ufa, 1700km from Sochi.

Ricciardo said that, even if Renault has delayed the introduction of improvements to its V6 hybrid power units until the American race in Texas in a fortnight, Singapore “proved that [despite all the criticisms] we do have a very good car”.

Red Bull energy drink tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz has set the end of this month as the deadline for finalisation of a deal for a replacement engine for next year – certain to be from Ferrari.

Mercedes’ world champion Lewis Hamilton took a shot at Red Bull this week over its complaints about Renault which has led to the unwinding of their partnership at the end of this season.

“It seems really odd for me, having witnessed Red Bull’s success [four consecutive world titles in 2010-2013] and then the moment they don’t have success it’s like they have been upset about it. I have not seen that with any other team,” Hamilton said.

Mercedes finished first and second at Sochi last year, with Hamilton ahead of Nico Rosberg, and can clinch its second constructors’ title this weekend if it scores three points more than Ferrari.

However, Mercedes team chairman Niki Lauda is concerned at the possibility of a repeat of the comparatively lacklustre performance of its WO6 cars in Singapore.

“Sochi is a Singapore-type of asphalt, so it [victory] is not done and not that easy,” Lauda said.

Honda will have a new-specification engine for Fernando Alonso’s McLaren, which will incur a penalty that could relegate him to the back of the grid, but it has not had time to build a second for Jenson Button.

Honda has used its last four development ‘tokens’ on the internal combustion engine improvements and exhaust parts, leaving the upgrade of its major weakness, its MGU-H (motor generator unit – heat), to the off-season.

“The logical step is to change the compressor area, but because of the layout that’s not going to happen [for now],” said Honda’s F1 project chief, Yasuhisa Arai.

“We are still looking to improve the internal combustion side of the engine, but without changing the layout.”

F1 ownership in the spotlight again
F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone claimed this week that there were three potential buyers in the wings to take control of the sport. He said a deal was likely by the end of the year.

The most oft-mentioned buyer is a consortium led by American Stephen Ross (the owner of the Miami Dolphins gridiron club) and including Qatar Sports Investments.

However, as London newspaper The Guardian’s Giles Richards pointed out: “Ecclestone is ever the master of smoke and mirrors and it is hard to take anything he says without a shovelful of salt”.

CVC Capital Partners is the largest shareholder in F1 with 35.5 per cent and already has made massive profits on the price at which it bought in a decade ago.

Ecclestone has 5.3 per cent and a family trust representing his daughters and former wife another 8.5 per cent.

The other shareholders are investment management company Blackrock, US fund manager Waddell & Reed, and a huge Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, Norges, while the failed investment bank Lehman Brothers still has 15 per cent – inherited when Germany’s Kirch media empire collapsed.

Two midfield teams, Sauber and Force India, have complained to the European Union about what they claim are unfair and even unlawful practices in the way the sport is governed and revenues are distributed.

“We knew some [top teams] had preferential terms, but the entire scope or scale of these privileges we only recently became aware of through the media,” Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn said.

“We have asked the [EU] Commission to look into the abuse of dominance which arises from the way privileges are granted to certain teams, may that be in terms of rule-making or in terms of revenue stream.

“This complaint is against the commercial rights holder [the entity headed by Ecclestone, with CVC as the major shareholder], not against any team.”

Polar opposite views on modern GP racing
Very different views this week on F1 as a product from the man who runs Britain’s Silverstone circuit and legendary American driver Mario Andretti, the 1978 world champion.

Unable to pay its race fee despite a sell-out crowd of 140,000 at the British GP in July, Silverstone managing director Patrick Allen called F1 a “shit product” and “not saleable”.

Bernie Ecclestone admitted F1 was “not top of the range” now, primarily because of the quiet hybrid power units (set to become louder next year), while Andretti defended the sport as still “a great product”.

Allen said fans did not want to see processions as had happened so often with the Mercedes domination of the hybrid era.

“As a promoter I can only promote what you give me, and if that isn’t up to standard people aren’t going to buy,” Allen told London newspaper The Independent.

“Months and months back I said it to Mr E himself that I can’t sell tickets for a shit product. I’ve said that people don’t come to watch guys looking at data screens. Fans want to see gladiators racing and fighting it out in a fair fight,” Allen stated.

“Nobody wants to hear drivers getting told to ‘lift’, ‘coast’ or ‘we’re not going to catch the guy in front, settle for second’. I think it is criminal when we have got to that state of racing and that is not saleable. I think Bernie is as frustrated with it as we all are.

“How long is it before the technical director [of a team] is stood on the top step, not the driver?

“You’ve just got to throw the towel in then and look for something else.”

Allen urged the abolition of pitstops to “get flag-to-flag racing back into F1”.

However, 75-year-old Andretti jumped to F1’s defence a fortnight out from the US GP in Texas.

“Formula One is a great product,” Andretti told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport publication.

“It keeps its integrity because of the technology. That’s the trademark. [The technology] is why the fans love Formula One.

“Motorsport in general is expensive, and sometimes [F1] goes too far, so every now and then the sport needs to adapt. But I say adapt, not do things differently just for the sake of change.

“No racing series is perfect. There is no magic key, so please don’t try to reinvent the wheel. That would be the worst thing they could do. It’s exactly the mistake IndyCar made. They betrayed their roots and introduced things that do not fit with the series.”

Asked if F1 had anything to learn from IndyCar, Andretti said: “It’s the opposite. Everyone is talking about Mercedes’ dominance and that it is wrecking the sport, but I think it’s produced some great stories.

“Now everyone is watching Ferrari to see if they can close the gap. The GPs in Hungary and Singapore showed that Mercedes can no longer afford to make the slightest mistake, and as a fan I love that,” the American racing icon stated.