MOTORSPORT: F1 can't make hard decision

One announcement this week clarified one important matter on grand prix racing in Australia, but another – far more important in the bigger picture – has not been forthcoming.

Firstly, the date for next year’s GP in Melbourne has been brought forward to mid-March.

The past couple of years the event has been later and clashed with the start of the Australian Football League season, with the GP the loser from that. The scheduling of it for March 14-17 next year will avert that clash – a sign that Formula 1’s new owners, American group Liberty Media, are cognisant of such factors, unlike former supremo Bernie Ecclestone. The decision should boost attendance at the GP.

Australian Grand Prix Corporation chief executive Andrew Westacott said it was “fantastic news” knowing the date more than eight months out.

It will still need the formal tick of approval from the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) late this year as part of the whole 2019 calendar, but it can be taken as 99.99 per cent locked in.

The locking in of the F1 GP date has a knock-on effect for the Supercars calendar and thereafter local second and third tier racing programs. Consequently, the date of the 2019 Adelaide 500 were also locked in this week (Feb 28-Mar 3) – along with it its position as the first round of the 2019 Virgin Australia Supercar Championship.

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F1 engine rules still MIA

What isn’t known yet though – and the deadline was supposed to have been last Saturday (June 30) – is what the F1 engine rules are going to be beyond 2020.

Manufacturers, the FIA and Liberty have been discussing the subject for quite some time but there is no sign – certainly no outward sign – of agreement on the way forward.

The importance of the decision(s) is that the V6 hybrid power units, that have been in the sport since 2014, are what were loudly decried by former AGPC chairman Ron Walker as “not Formula 1” because they lacked the traditional visceral sound and were a deterrent to fans.

Despite his bold hopes of orchestrating change, Walker died early this year with the hybrids little different now to what they were at the start of this era.

The expiry of the existing rules in 2020 is the opportunity for change and, F1 purists would say, the chance for engines that would restore the piercing noise for which the sport was known.

But – surprise, surprise – there is some fun and games going on.

It has escaped the cursory commentators on GP racing, but not the well-informed Dieter Rencken on RaceFans.net.

The essence of Rencken’s enlightening article is that Ferrari may have been delaying the formulation of new rules out of a fear that Porsche could enter F1.

While Australia’s nine-time GP winner and Porsche ambassador Mark Webber has always said he can’t see that happening, a representative of Porsche’s parent, the VW Group, has been attending meetings on F1’s future powertrains.

And Rencken says that VW/Porsche would hardly have assigned its “illustrious and high-ranking physicist” Dr Donatus Wichelhaus to the FIA-headed working group on the subject “without serious intent”.

The way Rencken tells it, the only manufacturers participating in the discussions in recent times have been those already competing in the sport – Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault and Honda – and VW/Porsche.

Others that might have been enticed if the enormous costs of F1 engine programs could have been slashed – such as Aston Martin (a sponsor of Red Bull Racing) and specialists Illmor and Cosworth – appear to have been lost.

Rencken paints Ferrari (and Fiat) chief Sergio Marchionne as having a strategy to prolong the talks until it is too late for Porsche to press the button on building an F1 powertrain for 2021.

If that leaves just the four existing manufacturers in the ‘game’ then it will likely mean little significant change to the power units the sport now has, simply because those four have already invested so heavily in the technology.

While GP attendances have remained surprisingly strong (certainly in Melbourne but more particularly at Britain’s Silverstone where the ‘show’ is this weekend for Lewis Hamilton’s home race) the quieter, duller spectacle of the hybrid era has been blamed for the decline in the sport’s global TV audience.

The signs now are that the chance for a ‘new beginning’ from 2021 may be passed up.

McLaren still ‘years away’ after shake-up

While carsales’ own Daniel Ricciardo continues to indicate he is confident of clarifying his future this month (with it increasingly looking like him continuing at Red Bull Racing), there has been upheaval this week at the McLaren team reported to have made a big play for him.

Racing director Eric Boullier has resigned (read: driven out) after four unsuccessful years in that role, with no podiums since the 2014 Australian GP.

The restructuring in the wake of Boullier’s exit includes the appointment of Gil de Ferran as sporting director.

French-born Brazilian de Ferran won the 2003 Indianapolis 500 for Roger Penske and ironically has been closely connected for many years with the motorsport activities of Honda, the engine supplier McLaren ditched this season in favour of Renault.

Another appointment is that of Italian engineer Andrea Stella, already at McLaren and who worked with superstar driver Fernando Alonso at Ferrari, as McLaren’s performance director, responsible for all trackside operations.

McLaren’s American chief executive, Zak Brown, has admitted that there won’t be any quick fix.

“This is going to take some time,” Brown said.

“We are years away. I don’t know if that’s two or 10, or somewhere in between. Probably more like somewhere in between,” he said.