MOTORSPORT: Farewells for Ricciardo and Lowndes

Daniel Ricciardo will complete a century of races for Red Bull's flagship Formula 1 team in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend as he closes the book on a huge chapter of his career and prepares for a new one.

Ricciardo admits that he expects to have "a right good cry ... maybe a few of 'em" before he departs the team with which he has won seven GPs, been on the podium 29 times and had three pole positions – two of them in Monaco and the other just four weeks ago in Mexico.

The Aussie driver will switch to Renault's factory team next season knowing that "I have given them [Red Bull] everything – and having received the same in return".

It will be a dignified and respectful end to more than a decade in Red Bull's motorsport system, leaving 21-year-old Max Verstappen as the team's undoubted No. 1 man as it tries to rediscover its glory days from early this decade, migrating to Honda power next year.

Other superstars of F1 are moving on too – Fernando Alonso, after 17 years, to compete again in next year's Indianapolis 500 and complete the World Endurance Championship sports car 'super season' that will end with the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June. Kimi Raikkonen will depart Ferrari for the rejuvenated Sauber team where he began.

So the weekend will be a 'season' of goodbyes, with Craig Lowndes also winding up his full-time Supercar days with Triple Eight Race Engineering at the Newcastle 500 as stablemate Shane Van Gisbergen battles DJR Team Penske's Scott McLaughlin for the title. And also saying goodbye to his old team Tickford Racing is veteran Ford driver Mark Winterbottom. Frosty's swansong with the team will also be in Newcastle this weekend, after which he joins the Holden camp in place of Lee Holdsworth at Team 18.

"I'm really excited. It was a big call to go to Team 18, but now I've met the team and Sponsors and seen what's coming it's really exciting," Winterbottom was quoted as saying on the supercars.com site.

"I think it's going to be a good year and when it all comes out about the staff and sponsor everyone will understand why I've made the move and it'll make more sense."

On the other side of the coin, there will be a big return next year – Robert Kubica in F1.

Kubica, the only GP driver to have come out of Poland, was a phenomenal talent a decade ago, lined up for a Ferrari future before a crash in an obscure rally that left him with severe arm injuries. At 34 years of age he will be back in a race seat with the now-embattled Williams team for which he won the 2008 Canadian GP.

Ricciardo this week reflected on The Players Tribune website on his life with Red Bull since it first trialled him at Estoril in Portugal in 2007 and opted to put the kid from Perth, WA, in its junior development squad.

It backed him through Formula Renault and British F3, placing him at the subsequently-defunct HRT (Hispania, not Holden, Racing Team) for his F1 debut in 2011, elevating him into its Toro Rosso squad and then, after Mark Webber's retirement, into RBR.

Ricciardo immediately upstaged four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel in the first year of the V6 hybrid cars, 2014. At the end of that season the German shifted to Ferrari – where the Aussie may yet join, or replace, him, if things go well at Renault.

"Racing at the highest level is brutal ... [but] I feel incredibly privileged to have driven for Red Bull Racing and been part of the Red Bull family for 10 years," Ricciardo wrote in a piece from the heart on theplayerstribune.com.

"They gave me my break, and without Dr Marko [Red Bull tycoon Dietrich Matechitz's all-powerful motorsport consultant] spotting me all those years ago, I don't think I would have been able to make my way to F1, to my dream job.

"I've done so much with Red Bull. I can leave having given them my everything and having received the same in return.

"But I needed to listen to my heart, I needed to go it alone and make my own decision.

"Change is scary – it's f------ terrifying. And I know the next part of my journey won't always be easy, but I had to take this step to try to be the best version of me.

"It was the next step, the next leap, a new challenge.

"I'm going to Renault next year, and I'm going with an open mind and a full heart.

"But for now I want to end this year strong."

Beyond that, when his career is done for good, Ricciardo wants to have won at least one F1 world championship, to be remembered for his 'honey badger' spirit and "that I changed the sport somehow, that I had fun, that I drove hard and fair – that I left my mark."

Like the overtaking he has made an art form in the hybrid era, Daniel Ricciardo is all class – on and off the track.

The heat is on Rally Australia organisers more than ever to add a Sydney stage or two to the event or, with the expanding World Rally Championship, risk dropping off the calendar after next year.

Tommi Makinen – the man who won four consecutive world titles as a driver in the 1990s and has managed Toyota's successful return to the WRC after a 17-year break, winning the manufacturers' championship in just its second season – was quoted by Autosport saying at Coffs Harbour last weekend: "What are we doing here? This is not the right place.

"We come here, to the middle of nowhere, and there is nobody watching.

"We have an incredible, incredible end to the year [with both driver and manufacturer championships on the line], but no atmosphere.

"I don't understand this. When I was competing we were in Australia in Perth and almost every year we had the rally voted as the best. But not this rally.

"The championship has been decided [this year] with nobody watching – this is maybe the reason we have to have the final round in Europe."

Rally Australia chairman Ben Rainsford acknowledges the need for a Sydney 'component' to the event, perhaps a 'Super Special' stage near the Harbour Bridge and Opera House and another competitive stage on the outskirts of the city, but says it will need assistance from the NSW government to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles.