MOTORSPORT: Electric racing powering ahead

BMW has confirmed its commitment to electric racing, officially registering a future works team for Formula E, the international open-wheeler electric series.

Already involved in the series with America’s Andretti Autosport and as the official vehicle supplier, BMW was one of nine powertrain manufacturers announced recently for Formula E’s fifth season in 2018-19.

It has now registered its own team as part of its long-term global motorsport strategy.

BMW motorsport director Jens Marquardt says Formula E, now in its third season, “has enjoyed rapid development and is now regarded as a high-level racing series”.

The 2018-19 season will mark the debut of an upgraded chassis for the series from French company Spark Racing Technology and a new standard battery from McLaren Applied Technology, meaning the end of mid-race car changes because of the existing short life of the batteries.

The other powertrain manufacturers for season five are Audi-related ABT; PSA’s Citroen offshoot DS Automobiles; Jaguar Land Rover; India’s Mahindra Racing; Chinese-owned, British-based NextEV NIO; Penske Autosport, operated by Roger ‘The Captain’ Penske’s son Jay under the name Dragon Racing; Renault; and French-founded, Monaco-owned Venturi Automobiles.

Mercedes also has taken an option to enter that season, while Fiat and Ferrari chief Sergio Marchionne has said that the Italian group “needs to be involved” in Formula E.

Meanwhile, the first two rounds in a new Electric GT Championship – using Tesla’s Model S P100D – have been scheduled for France’s Paul Ricard circuit on November 25-26.

Other rounds comprising two 60km races are planned for Portugal, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain and Spain next year, although circuits, dates, teams and drivers have not been announced.

However, Frenchman Alex Premat – well-known to Australian audiences, especially from his time in V8 Supercars – and Dutchman Jeroen Bleekemolen, who also had a taste of Supercars, are in line to take part.

Electric GT Championship chief executive Mark Gemmell has promised “a fantastic festival for sustainability that fans are certain to enjoy”.
Hyundai’s turn in WRC? – with a little Aussie help
Hyundai is seeking to become the fourth manufacturer to win in four rounds of the World Rally Championship on the Mediterranean island of Corsica this weekend.

And Hyundai’s New Zealand driver Hayden Paddon and his co-driver John Kennard are getting some assistance from Australian rally driver Brendan Reeves.

While this is the first all-asphalt rally of this year’s WRC, Reeves and British co-driver Seb Marshall – who will succeed Kennard alongside Paddon later in the year – are preparing ‘gravel notes’ for the Kiwis.

Reeves and Marshall are driving the Corsica stages in Paddon’s reconnaissance car before competition starts each day to add up-to-date information about course conditions to the pacenotes the Kiwis made on reconnaissance.

Gravel is often thrown up on to asphalt roads by rally competitors after the original notes are written, making the surface loose.

While M-Sport Ford, Toyota and Citroen have each had a WRC win with the new, more powerful and aerodynamic cars so far this year, Hyundai has led two events without ultimate success and has had the most stage wins (20) before Corsica – 16 of them by Belgian driver Thierry Neuville.

Neuville also has the best record on Corsica’s abrasive roads that are tough on cars, crews and tyres of Hyundai’s trio of drivers – Spaniard Dani Sordo is the third.

Meanwhile, moves are afoot to slow some stages of Rally Finland at the end of July because of the exceptional speed of the 2017 cars.

One stage of Rally Sweden in February was deemed too fast and Rally Finland is the fastest event in the championship.
“I think they will make some artificial chicanes to slow the cars down,” said Toyota driver Jari-Matti Latvala, a Finn and three-time winner of his home event.
Brabham still dreams of Indy 500 victory
Matthew Brabham continues to race in Robby Gordon’s Stadium Super Trucks series but says winning the Indianapolis 500 remains his goal.

Having finished 22nd on debut in the American open-wheeler classic last May, there is little prospect of a start in the big event at ‘The Brickyard’ again next month for the 23-year-old without a late miracle.

KV Racing, the team that fielded the IndyCar for him last year, with support from Pirtek and colourful Gold Coast motor racing identity Brett Murray, has folded.

However, Brabham – in California this week for the Stadium Super Trucks round on the Long Beach [IndyCar] Grand Prix program – said he was concentrating his efforts on finding sponsorship to get into Indy racing.

“Stadium Super Trucks is the most fun I’ve ever had from a pure driving aspect,” Brahbam told California’s Press-Telegram newspaper.

“While I try to slave away at IndyCar, this is the perfect thing for me to learn and not get rusty.

“The ultimate goal is to win the Indy 500.

“My family has won a lot of races around the world. Monaco (by late grandfather Sir Jack), Le Mans (by father Geoff and uncle David) … the next one is the Indy 500.

“It is a long-term goal.”

Australia’s 2014 IndyCar champion Will Power is looking to get his 2017 campaign on track with Team Penske at Long Beach after not finishing the season-opener at St Petersburg in Florida last month. Penske’s reigning series champion, Simon Pagenaud, is the defending Long Beach winner.
Mercedes to bounce back in Shanghai?
Ferrari is one-up on Mercedes in Formula 1 after the Australian Grand Prix two weeks ago, but Melbourne victor Sebastian Vettel says Mercedes “has to be the favourite” for the second round of the world championship in Shanghai this Sunday.

Mercedes has won four of the past five Chinese GPs on Shanghai’s 5.4km circuit, including all three of the hybrid power unit era that began in 2014.

Lewis Hamilton is a four-time winner of the race – the first two times with McLaren (then with Mercedes engines), and in 2014 and ’15 with the Mercedes works team. Nico Rosberg, now retired, won for the tristar in 2012 and last year.

The only other winner in the past five years has been Fernando Alonso in 2013 with Ferrari.

While forecast rain may aid Alonso this weekend in the sadly uncompetitive McLaren-Honda, Eric Boullier – the racing director of McLaren – has said “we won’t be as fortuitous with our pace” in Shanghai as in Melbourne, where Alonso somehow was in the top 10 for quite some distance.

“Long, fast straights will likely expose the weaknesses in our package more than Albert Park did,” Boullier said.

And Honda’s F1 chief Yusuke Hasegawa said: “We expect the Chinese GP to be even more challenging.”

Alonso makes no secret that his car is the worst in the field.

“It’s not only [way down on] power, it’s reliability, it’s fuel saving, and there are a lot more implications,” he said.

“We [he and Belgian teammate Stoffel Vandoorne] cannot drive normally, because we need to drive around the engine.”

Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo, the carsales.com.au global ambassador, says watching Ferrari and Mercedes onboard footage from the Melbourne race indicated to him that his Red Bull Racing RB13’s main problem was lack of rear downforce.

“We don’t have enough rear grip, so downforce basically,” Ricciardo said in Shanghai.

“I don’t know if it is we don’t have enough or we haven’t set the car up in the right way.

“I watched some onboards of Ferrari and Mercedes and it looks like they have more rear grip than us.

“We couldn’t attack the corner as much … they just seem more planted on the rear.

“I don’t think we have understood it (the RB13) well enough yet to get the most out of it with set-up and ride heights, that sort of thing.”

Ferrari reserve Antonio Giovinazzi, a creditable 12th on debut in Melbourne, will substitute for Sauber’s injured German Pascal Wehrlein again this weekend.

While Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn vigorously defends Wehrlein, if Giovinazzi fills in for him again at the next race in Bahrain it is being said that Ferrari may insist he be kept in the Ferrari-powered Sauber because he will become ineligible for the young-driver testing during the season with Ferrari.
Sandown kicks off the Shannons Nationals
While the Supercars are in action at Tasmania’s Symmons Plains this weekend another national series gets underway at Sandown – the Shannons Nationals.

Five categories are on the bill at the Melbourne circuit, with two rounds – six races – for the Australian Formula 4 Championship.

There are 13 F4 entries – still only two-thirds of the 20 cars that CAMS imported three years ago to start the category.

Six of the entries are from South Australia’s Team BRM and four from AGI Sport. The new Zagame Autosport, headed by Cameron McConville, has two entries, with the other one from Junior Racing Development.

Four of the drivers are CAMS Foundation Rising Stars with $50,000 scholarship loans – Simon Fallon, Cameron Shields, Zane Morse with Team BRM and Ryan Suhle with Zagame.

Fallon, last season’s rookie of the year, will be in the chassis in which Jordan Lloyd and Will Brown won the first two Australian F4 titles.

New Zealand Formula Ford champion Liam Lawson has joined the series with Team BRM.

Olympic Games silver medallist and Commonwealth Games gold medallist John Steffensen is making his car racing debut in the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Australia with Zagame in a 997.

The Sandown meeting also includes the debut of the Australian Prototype Series while the Radical Australia Cup is on the bill separately.
Date set for SuperUte launch
The first completed SuperUte for the new series replacing the V8 Utes from the Townsville 400 on July 7-9 is to be unveiled on May 30.

“We are very pleased with the progress [of SuperUtes] to date,” Supercars managing director Matt Braid said.

“The initial design process is now completed on three of Australia’s most popular dual-cabs, while at least two others are expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

“We’ve got several of Australia’s leading manufacturers and suppliers on board who have provided great assistance in our design process and all involved are excited to see the first completed SuperUte.”

Testing is scheduled for June in Queensland.

Suspension company Supashock is supplying dampers and springs to the category and PDW the wheels.