MOTORSPORT: Ferrari's back but Merc vows heat

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel has won back the lead in the Formula 1 drivers’ world championship, but Mercedes still leads the constructors’ championship.

And reigning champion Lewis Hamilton says Ferrari “will falter” when Mercedes pressures the Italian team once the dominant make in this hybrid era introduces its next engine upgrade at the revived French Grand Prix in a fortnight.

Daniel Ricciardo did what he could with what he had in Canada early today, Australian time, but was outpaced by Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen almost all weekend – they finished third and fourth – and the carsales.com.au ambassador dropped a spot to fourth in the drivers’ championship.

Australia’s recent Indianapolis 500 winner, Will Power, has lost the lead of the IndyCar series after crashing late in the latest round in Texas.

Hyundai is imposing itself as the new force in world rallying, although its victory in the weekend’s WRC round on Italian island Sardinia, was one of the closest in history, while Volkswagen is dominating world rallycross.

And as international racing returned to Switzerland for the first time in more than 60 years, top honours in the penultimate event of the fourth Formula E series went to Audi, courtesy of Brazilian driver Lucas Di Grassi.

The ban in Switzerland – imposed after the 24 Hours of Le Mans disaster in 1955 that killed 83 spectators and injured more than 100 – has only been lifted for fully-electric cars.

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Verstappen’s turn to take Red Bull honours

Daniel Ricciardo was initially credited with the fastest lap of the Canadian GP but was promptly denied it when the last two laps were deleted from the classifications because a celebrity started waving the chequered flag early.

The flag-waver, model Winnie Harlow, was at the Montreal race as a guest of Lewis Hamilton.

Her error means that Max Verstappen goes into the history books for the fastest circuit on lap 65 of 70.

Ricciardo went fastest on lap 69, but the race was officially classified after 68 laps.

Ricciardo was an exception in another processional GP – the only driver of the six in the top three teams filling the first three rows of the grid to gain positions in the race.

He got by Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari on the opening lap and then overtook Hamilton during pit stops after a phenomenal ‘in’ lap.

Ricciardo and Verstappen had Renault’s upgraded engine for the race, although the Aussie’s car reverted to its original kinetic energy recovery system after the one that failed in his fabulous Monaco victory two weeks earlier.

Ricciardo said there had been problems throughout the weekend getting his car properly ‘calibrated’.

“It wasn’t easy at times to manage tyres and wheel slip,” he said.

“I don’t think I could have done much more [than fourth place].

“We did the best we could.”

Ricciardo is not sure whether there will be another change of the kinetic system in France, which would incur a 10-place grid penalty.

While Vettel now leads with 121 points – after the 50th victory of his career, third this season but first since early April – from Hamilton on 120 after his fifth place in Montreal, the other Mercedes driver, Valtteri Bottas, second today, is back up to third in the standings with 86 – two more than Ricciardo.

Raikkonen is fifth on 68 points while Verstappen, who kept himself out of trouble for a change in Montreal, has 50.

It was the first GP at which 20-year-old Verstappen has not been accompanied by his father, Jos, since his debut in Melbourne in 2015.
If that helped solve one problem, F1 generally still has big issues.

Only the top three teams and their six drivers can win races unless there are ever exceptional circumstances, while only two constructors can win the other world title. Mercedes has 206 points and Ferrari 189. Red Bull is a distant third on 134, despite its hefty points haul in Canada.

Renault’s factory team is now best of the rest, but its drivers – Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz Junior – were both lapped in Montreal, even though their seventh and eighth places were the French make’s best combined result since its return as a fully-fledged outfit.

McLaren, having discarded Honda engines, is now the worst of the three Renault-powered teams, with Fernando Alonso retiring from his 300th GP and his teammate, Stoffel Vandoorne, only 16th of 17 finishers.

New Zealander Brendon Hartley, under pressure to hold his spot in F1, qualified his Toro Rosso-Honda an excellent 12th but was eliminated on the first lap in a crash with Canadian Lance Stroll’s Williams.

Vettel’s victory was Ferrari’s first in Montreal since Michael Schumacher’s record seventh win there in 2004 and came on the 40th anniversary of the first GP victory of Canadian legend Gilles Villeneuve, the most beloved driver of the late Enzo Ferrari.

Villeneuve’s son, 1997 world champion Jacques, drove a lap in his father’s race-winning 312T3 ahead of the parade of this year’s drivers around the circuit named after Villeneuve senior, who was killed in a crash in 1982.

Ferrari has been under suspicion most of this season for trickery with the turbochargers on its SF71H cars, although technical authorities have ticked off on them.

However, Mercedes team chairman Niki Lauda – whose first two world titles were won with Ferrari – pointedly described the Italian stable’s package in Montreal as “unbelievable”.

A costly mix-up for Power

Will Power blamed a communication mix-up for his crash on the 205th lap of the 248-lap IndyCar round at Texas Motor Speedway that cost him the lead of that series.

Power said he did not hear his spotter tell him he had a car on his outside because he and his Team Penske race strategist were talking at the time.

“It’s just a bad situation, but something that happens at a track like this,” Power said after the crash that eliminated him and Canadian rookie Zachary Claman De Melo.

“It’s not the guy on the outside’s fault.”

Apart from seeing Brisbane-born New Zealander Scott Dixon take the series lead with victory in Texas, and American Alexander Rossi also go ahead of him, Power faces a penalty for avoidable contact.

Dixon, who has 357 points to Rossi’s 334 and Power’s 321, is now outright third on the list of IndyCar race winners with 43 victories, ahead of Michael Andretti and behind only AJ Foyt and Mario Andretti.

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WRC, World RX and Formula E

Just 0.7 seconds separated first and second in Rally Italia after almost 315km and 3½
hours of competition.

Hyundai has stretched its lead in the WRC manufacturer championship over M-Sport Ford and the Korean brand’s Belgian star Thierry Neuville his advantage over the world champion of the past five years, Sebastien Ogier after seven of 13 rounds – with a break now until the end of July.

Neuville overhauled Ogier on the final day for his third win of the year in one of the three closest finishes in WRC history, while young Finn Esapekka Lappi in a Toyota Yaris was almost 2 minutes back in third place.

New Zealander Hayden Paddon, still suffering back pain from the previous round in Portugal, was fourth for Hyundai, almost three minutes behind the top two, with Citroens driven by Norwegian Mads Ostberg and Irishman Craig Breen fifth and sixth.

Neuville now has 149 points, Ogier – who said he had not been prepared to take as many risks as the Belgian in Sardinia – 122, followed by Toyota pair Ott Tanak of Estonia and Lappi on 77 and 70 respectively.

Hyundai has 212 manufacturer points, M-Sport Ford 184, Toyota 161 and Citroen 129.

Volkswagen is romping away with the World Rallycross Championship, leading Peugeot and Audi by 39 points after five rounds.

Sweden’s reigning champion Johan Kristoffersson won all his qualifying heats, semi-final and the final at Hell in Norway on the weekend and his VW team boss and two-time series champion, Norwegian Petter Solberg, was third – with Audi’s Swede, Mattias Ekstrom, sandwiched between them.

France’s WRC record-holder Sebastien Loeb failed to make the World RX final at Hell but remains second in his Peugeot, 31 points behind Kristoffersson.

World RX will go electric from 2020, its seventh season, with series organiser IMG saying it has been collaborating with the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and manufacturers on that for 18 months.

ORECA will become the sole chassis supplier to the series and Williams Advanced Engineering the single battery supplier.

After the Zurich ePrix broke Switzerland’s long motor racing drought at the weekend, the fourth Formula E series will conclude with two races in New York on July 14-15.

Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne, driving for the Chinese-owned Techeetah team but once a Red Bull junior alongside Daniel Ricciardo, goes to the Big Apple with a 23-point lead over Briton Sam Bird of DS Virgin Racing.