MOTORSPORT: Electric racing Audi’s new focus

Long touted as perhaps the next manufacturer to enter Formula 1, Audi has announced that it will go open-wheeler racing – but it will be in Formula E, the fully-electric series.

Audi, part of the Volkswagen empire, will step up its existing financial and technical support of the German Formula E (FE) team ABT in the category’s third season starting next month, then become a fully-fledged participant in the fourth season in 2017-18.

It will integrate the FE activity into its works motorsport activity and develop the electric powertrain with ABT’s existing technical partner Schaeffler.

Audi has been the most dominant manufacturer in top-level sports car racing this century, especially at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, although it has been beaten by fellow VW marque Porsche there the past two years.

Audi’s other long-running factory race program has been in the German touring car championship, the DTM, and it is strongly represented in GT racing around the world and in the World Rallycross Championship.

FE will be its first factory single-seater, open-wheeler racing program and Dr Stefan Knirsch, an Audi board member with responsibility for technical development, explained the rationale for the move.

“Electric mobility is one of the key topics in our industry. We intend to evolve into one of the leading premium car manufacturers in this field,” Knirsch said.

“By 2025 every fourth Audi should be an electric vehicle. The first model for this is planned to be an SUV we’re going to present in 2018.

“In the light of these plans, adapting our motorsport program and taking up a commitment in a fully-electric racing series is only a logical move.”

The ABT-Schaeffler operation has been among the top teams in the first two seasons of FE and Audi motorsport boss Dr Wolfgang Ullrich said it was the “logical partner”.

Ullrich said Audi used motorsport to test and develop new technologies, had made motorsport history “on several occasions” – most notably with diesel hybrids at Le Mans – and “now we intend to repeat this in fully-electric racing”.

Autosport.com has reported that Audi’s decision “means FE will soon have seven teams backed by a range of manufacturers”.

“Audi will compete against Jaguar (joining for the 2016-17 season), Renault (with the e.dams team), [Citroen offshoot] DS, Mahindra, NextEV and Faraday Future (with Dragon Racing, the American team run by Jay Penske, a son of the legendary Roger),” Autosport said.

“Of the remaining teams, Venturi has announced a technical partnership with major German company ZF, Andretti is understood to be working with BMW in an engineering capacity and Techeetah is running a Renault powertrain in lieu of landing its own manufacturer partner in the near future.”

ABT is a long-established family business in Germany that has participated in motorsport for six decades and has become the leading tuner of cars from the VW group.

Audi has perennially been linked to an entry to F1, most recently last year when Austrian-owned Red Bull Racing was warring with Renault – a relationship since miraculously healed and with Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo saying its V6 hybrid power unit is now at least equal to that of Ferrari.

Audi will go head to head in Formula E with a rival to its road car business, Jaguar. Late last year Jaguar announced it would get behind the category this year. Now it has come good on its promise.

Just over a week ago, Jaguar's I-Type race car took to the track at Donnington Park for what the company announced was the car's first official shakedown. In a statement announcing the car will compete in Hong Kong for its first competitive event on October 9, Jaguar had this to say:

Jaguar has an enviable motorsport history, winning the famous Le Mans 24 Hours seven times – more than any other British manufacturer – to name just one race. Through competition, Jaguar has developed new technologies, most famously pioneering the use of the disc brake in racing.

Formula E, unlike other forms of motorsport, will provide Jaguar with a real-world performance test bed for Jaguar Land Rover to develop its future EV powertrains, pushing the boundaries of electric technology in an intensely competitive, high performance environment.

Gamers to get big chance against FE field
US$1 million prizemoney – A$1.33 million at today’s exchange rate – will be up for grabs when 10 video gamers compete against 20 Formula E drivers in a virtual ‘ePrix’ in Las Vegas in January.

The gamers will be selected through online qualifying races as part of the ‘Road to Vegas Challenge’.

The regular FE drivers – many of them also with F1 experience – will then compete against the gamers in the virtual race that will serve as the final on a specially-designed track incorporating the Las Vegas Strip.

FE chief executive Alejandro Agag said the top prize would be $US250,000 “and it’s probably quite likely that a gamer wins that”.

The event, at the Mandalay Bay Hotel, will be part of a sport and business innovation summit within the Consumer Electronics Show in the first week of January.

Las Vegas does not have a round of the third FE season starting next month and running to the end of July, with the scheduled American event having two races in New York on July 29-30.

FE has teased the prospect of a virtual race becoming part of future championships with gamers challenging the regular drivers for points and prizemoney.

Nissan GT-R for NZ rounds of GT Endurance Championship
The first Australian winner of Nissan’s GT Academy, former Australian Post courier Matt Simmons, will get to race in the remaining rounds of the Australian GT Endurance Championship with Nissan entering its NISMO-built Bathurst 12-Hour GT-R.

Ironically, the two races are in New Zealand at Tony Quinn’s Hampton Downs and Highlands circuits at the end of October and then two weeks later.

Simmons, who has been racing in the almost-completed Blancpain GT Endurance Cup in Europe this year, has been paired with Nissan V8 Supercar driver Michael Caruso for the two ‘Australian GT’ events.

It will be the GT debut for Caruso.

The car will be fielded by the Kelly brothers’ Nissan Motorsport that operates the Supercar team running the V8 Altimas.

It will be a particularly busy time for the Kellys, with the NZ events coming immediately after the Gold Coast 600 Supercar round and sandwiching the Kiwi round of that series at Pukekohe.

Nissan won the Bathurst 12-Hour last year with its GT-R, driven by internationals, and was second this year, while its future in the Supercar Championship is in the melting pot in Japan, with a decision due by the Sandown 500 in a fortnight.

Sydney racer Brett Hobson, a six-year veteran of the V8 development series, has acquired two GT-Rs from the Always Evolving team in the US for which James Davison races and plans to field them as a privateer in Australian GT racing next year.

Hobson will have Wall Racing prepare the cars, which are to be handed over next month, and David Wall may partner him in the Bathurst 12-Hour on February 5.

‘Super’ opportunity for Carrera Cup leader
The Porsche Carrera Cup Australia leader, 21-year-old Queenslander Matt Campbell, will be the country’s representative at this month’s Porsche Motorsport Junior Programme Shootout overseas.

The shootout is a two-day evaluation of the best young talent from each international Carrera Cup series in Asia, Australia, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Scandinavia.

It will be held at a European circuit not yet named on September 26-27.
The winner gets a fully-funded Porsche Supercup drive next year.

Campbell had a hugely successful event at Sydney Motorsport Park last weekend and leads the Carrera Cup Australia by 73.5 points.

He will be a co-driver with Nissan Motorsport during the forthcoming Supercar endurance rounds.

Previous representatives at the Porsche Motorsport Junior Programme Shootout have been Nick Foster last year, Sam Power in 2014 and New Zealander Andre Heimgartner in 2012.

Another Kiwi, Earl Bamber, has been the standout story, becoming a Porsche factory driver and winning Le Mans outright last year.

Ricciardo lauds Red Bull’s ‘refreshing improvement’
Daniel Ricciardo says there has been “refreshing improvement” in both Red Bull’s F1 chassis and its TAG Heuer-badged Renault hybrid power unit this season.

“We went into [the season-opening grand prix in] Melbourne not really expecting much compared to the end of last year, but we came in with more horsepower, and then the [Renault] update helped and we’ve found a little bit more and a little more since then,” Ricciardo said.

“It’s been a nice refreshing improvement on both sides – the chassis is working well with the power unit.

“We’re now pretty much on par with the 2016 Ferrari [power unit] and that’s positive.

“They (Ferrari) made a really big step last year.”

Ferrari has upgraded its units for its home race this weekend – the Italian GP at Monza – while Mercedes made what may have been its final improvements for this season at last weekend’s Belgian GP, where Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton sandwiched Ricciardo in the podium positions.

Triple world champion Hamilton, leading Rosberg by nine points this season, repeated his dislike of the hybrids this week, saying fans don’t care about the technology in the V6 power units.

“It’s far too technical, far too complicated,” Hamilton said.

“Most people watching them don’t know what an MGU-H is and don’t bloody care.”

Renault driver Kevin Magnussen appears to be fit after his huge Belgian crash to race at Monza, the much-loved venue that has been part of the F1 championship every year but one since it began in 1950 and secured a new three-year deal after threats of being dropped.

A lively drivers’ meeting is anticipated there tonight, with Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel still upset about Ricciardo’s teenage teammate Max Verstappen’s aggression on the Spa track in Belgium.

Driver movements for next season also will be in the spotlight after Brazilian Felipe Massa, who came within a whisker of being world champion in 2008, announced he will end his 15-year career this season.

That opens up a seat at the Williams team, alongside Valtteri Bottas, who has been contracted for another two years.

The 2009 world champion, Jenson Button, could be a contender to return to the team with which he began in F1, although Williams probably will prefer a driver who can bring major sponsorship to it.

The man with the most money is Mexican Sergio Perez, but he is more likely to favour the Renault factory team with it if he departs Force India.

While second-year Brazilian driver Felipe Nasr has been unable to set the world on fire with Swiss team Sauber he may have the backing to secure the Williams seat.

Some sums on Power’s IndyCar chances
Will Power needs to outscore his IndyCar title rival Simon Pagenaud by 29 points at Watkins Glen in New York State this weekend if he’s to go the finale at Sonoma in California in a fortnight leading the championship.

To achieve that Power, the 2014 champion, will need to win at The Glen and have Frenchman Pagenaud, one of his three Penske teammates, finish 10th or worse.

However, if Power wins this weekend he will stretch his lead by at least 10 points ahead of the double-points Sonoma finale, with 100 for the win there.

The pair, who were Champ Car teammates at Craig Gore’s Team Australia in 2007 before the reunification of American open-wheeler racing, have had four wins each this season, while Pagenaud has had six pole positions to Power’s two and nine top-five finishes to the Australian’s eight.

Webber and WEC into the unknown
Cooling in the thin air 2250 metres above sea level will be the big issue for the hybrid sports cars during the World Endurance Championship’s first visit to Mexico City.

“It’s going into the unknown, for sure,” Porsche team principal Andreas Seidl said.

“The FIA (Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, the world governing body of motorsport) allowed for this year, as an exception for this race, that you can run special cooling.”

Despite winning the previous round at Germany’s Nurburgring, Mark Webber and the co-drivers of his Porsche 919, German Timo Bernhard and New Zealander Brendon Hartley, are 77.5 points off the lead of the drivers’ championship they won last season.

The trio in the other 919 – Frenchman Romain Dumas, German Marc Lieb and Switzerland’s Neel Jani – have a 33-point lead over Audi’s Englishman Oliver Jarvis, Frenchman Loic Duval and Brazilian Lucas di Grassi.

Porsche leads the manufacturer standings with 164 points to Audi’s 129 and Toyota’s 97.

VW names new chief for WRC team
Volkswagen has promoted Belgian Sven Smeets to be its motorsport managing director following the departure of German Jost Capito to become chief executive of the McLaren F1 team.

Smeets, a former rally co-driver, moved from Citroen to VW when the German brand began its WRC program which has yield 38 wins in 48 World Rally Championship rounds since the start of 2013.

He originally was team manager but more recently has been sporting director as VW prepared for the transition in the wake of McLaren hiring Capito.