MOTORSPORT: Engine upgrade for Ricciardo

Renault has brought forward the introduction of a new internal combustion engine in the hybrid power units of Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg’s cars for the first European grand prix of the Formula 1 season this weekend.

“Renault will definitely run the engines at [the Spanish GP at] Barcelona,” according to Jonathan Noble, a veteran correspondent and editor at Autosport and Motorsport.com, while it has not yet been decided whether customer team McLaren will use them.

Noble’s report suggests Renault has seen enough from dynamometer testing to believe that the upgrade will be an improvement in both performance and reliability and allow the RS19s “to run in a more powerful configuration for more of a GP weekend”.

While the start of the European ‘season’ traditionally is the time teams roll out their first major upgrades each year, Renault had not planned on introducing this engine until just before or just after the mid-season break in August.

Renault has said it is seeking to “reset” after its difficulties in the first four races this year.

“We know we are capable of much more … we need to make the most of our potential. We are hungry to get our campaign going,” Renault F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul has said.

Ricciardo and Hulkenberg have only six points each – from seventh places in Shanghai and Melbourne respectively – while Mercedes’ WO10s have finished first and second in every race so far this year and Valtteri Bottas leads five-time world champion Lewis Hamilton by a point, 87-86.

Hamilton says talks have been held within the Mercedes camp to avoid a repeat of the tensions between him and former teammate and 2016 champion Nico Rosberg.

“We have an agreed set of rules so that we finish the races one-two and we play supporting roles either way,” Hamilton said.

That’s ominous for Ferrari, which looked to have an edge through most of pre-season testing at the track on which Sunday night’s race will be run but may already have squandered its chance to topple Mercedes from its championship dominance of the hybrid era.

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel has likened tapping the potential of the SF90 to solving Rubik’s Cube. The Italian team will have a major upgrade to its power unit too this weekend.

Renault, traditionally the No.4 team in the hybrid era, is only seventh at the moment but is looking forward to returning to Barcelona, where its pre-season pace looked to be better than Red Bull Racing, which has switched from Renault to Honda power this year.

While RBR now has clearly made considerable progress with Honda, and Max Verstappen has been in excellent form, Renault’s chassis technical director Nick Chester says it takes confidence from the Spanish testing but that protection of harder-compound tyres is a major factor this weekend.

“We’re going from a circuit (Baku in Azerbaijan) with the lowest energy input into the tyres to the highest,” Chester said, adding that Renault will have “a few aero parts to add to the front wing and rear of the car and some mechanical tweaks”.

Irrespective of where carsales.com.au global ambassador Ricciardo qualifies, he will incur a three-place grid penalty for his mistake in Baku in backing into Daniil Kyvat’s Toro Rosso after they both overran a corner and went down an escape road.

“I’ll deal with it (the penalty) as best I can … maybe it’s time to crack out some of the overtaking moves,” ever-optimistic Ricciardo said – although Barcelona’s track is not renowned for passing.

Renault this week announced staff hirings and changes in its efforts to catch the top three teams but they may take a year or even two to have a major effect.

One of the recruits is Christophe Mary – who spent 14 years at Ferrari, four at Mercedes and more recently time at French automotive conglomerate PSA – as director of engineering.

The engine switch this weekend is likely to lead to penalties for Renault later in the year as it most probably will be the first team to exceed the season quota of three per car.

McLaren, which is fourth in the constructors’ championship after the double points finish by Carlos Sainz and rookie Lando Norris in Baku, has new team principal Andreas Seidl – who was at Porsche during its most recent Le Mans successes and before that at BMW – in place now.

There is turmoil in Brazil, with president Jair Bolsonaro announcing the country’s GP will be held from next year at a new circuit to be built in Rio de Janeiro with help from F1 owner Liberty Media and not needing public money. However, Interlagos in Sao Paulo claims to still have a contract and be confident of extending it.

Even stranger is that it is intended to name the Rio circuit after Ayrton Senna, the most famous Paulista, when a previous Rio track named after that city’s triple world champion Nelson Piquet was demolished to make way for the 2016 Olympics venues.

The World Rally Championship is in Chile this weekend for the first time, while Canberra’s round of the Australian Rally Championship is being run to a more compact one-day – Saturday – format, although still with two heats.

As Australia and New Zealand vie for next year’s Antipodean round of the WRC, Chile becomes the 32nd country to host a round – and Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville is chasing a hat-trick after his wins on French island Corsica and in Argentina.

Belgian Neuville has a 10-point lead over the world champion of the past six years, Frenchman Sebastien Ogier, back with Citroen this season, while Toyota’s Estonian Ott Tanak is third, 28 points behind Neuville, after leading earlier.

The Chilean event is based around Concepcion, about 500km south of capital Santiago, with some stages overlooking the Pacific Ocean and others deep in forests.

The Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has signalled that it will welcome hybrid cars from 2022 and that teams will be allowed to modify existing power units to contain costs.

Draft regulations, with the existing power limit of 380hp to remain, are due by the end of next month with finalised rules at the end of this year.

Meanwhile, the top two drivers in the ARC, Harry and Lewis Bates, are on home ground for the second round this weekend in their Toyota Yarises while Darren Windus, third in Western Australia, switches to a Hyundai i20 from his 20-year-old Subaru Impreza WRX.

“I’d be disappointed if we can’t be right near the pace of the Toyotas,” Victorian Windus said.

Adrian Coppin, a local who finished runner-up in a Skoda Fabia R5 last year to multiple national champion Eli Evans, is back in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX, while 2016 champion Molly Taylor is in her Subaru ahead of her touring car debut next weekend in the new TCR Australia at Sydney Motorsport Park in another ‘Subie’ for the Kelly Brothers.