MOTORSPORT: Good, bad, perhaps all for the best

Daniel Ricciardo is understandably optimistic about this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.
“I’ve started second and finished second at this track in the last two years, with fastest lap both times,” Ricciardo, the global ambassador for carsales.com.au, said.

“My aim this year is definitely to start on pole and try to go one better in the race.”

The twists and turns of the Singapore street circuit bring Ricciardo’s Red Bull-Renault into calculations against the Ferraris and, more particularly, the Mercedes’.

But, while the immediate outlook for Ricciardo is good, it’s not so bright –assuming he doesn’t score a seat at Ferrari o r Mercedes - should he stay at Red Bull beyond the expiry of his contract next season. Red Bull Racing (RBR) hasn’t been happy with its Renault power units during the four years of the 1.6-litre V6 hybrid era, but, from 2019, the team may have to use the unloved Honda engines.

Renault has told RBR it won’t supply engines beyond 2018. The decision is fall-out from McLaren becoming a Renault customer from next year, after discarding Honda as its factory engine supplier - seemingly a condition for the British team to retain Spaniard Fernando Alonso in its driver lineup beyond this season.

To keep Honda in F1, the Japanese company has been betrothed Red Bull’s junior team Toro Rosso for the next three years – and it now seems that RBR itself could end up with Honda power in 2019 and 2020.

But the good news for Ricciardo - should he stick with the Austrian energy drink company - is, under F1’s new engine regulations from 2021, Red Bull could have a new supplier – Porsche, which has a distinguished record with hybrid power units in racing.

Porsche will quit the World Endurance Championship at the end of this year, after dominating that series and winning the past three 24 Hours of Le Mans. Representatives of the German marque have been attending meetings framing the 2021 F1 engine regulations, and a senior executive recently confirmed it is eyeing participation in GP racing again.

This week came a report – penned by the reliable Mark Hughes, GP editor of Britain’s Motor Sport magazine – indicating Porsche may even buy Red Bull out of its team which won world titles in four consecutive years (2010-2013) before the introduction of the hybrid engines. Hughes mentioned that Australian Mark Webber – Ricciardo’s predecessor at RBR and more recently a WEC racer for Porsche and now one of the company’s ambassadors – “could be a link man between the two organisations”.

“No one is yet confirming or denying, but it (a Porsche takeover of RBR) makes a lot of sense,” Hughes wrote at www.motorsportmagazine.com.

“Red Bull might consider that its F1 programme of the last decade has achieved its marketing aims and that it no longer needs the vast expense of running an F1 team (or even two of them).

“It could continue as a sponsor to the works Porsche team and benefit from that association, but without anything like the same current spend.

“The rumours have it that the team will continue to be run by (RBR team principal) Christian Horner from the same base as currently (at Milton Keynes in Britain) and hopefully still with the same Adrian Newey-led technical team.

“The team would simply change ownership and acquire proper works engine status from one of the world’s most prestigious automotive brands.”

Hughes said it would be “a fantastic coup for F1 and (its major owner) Liberty to have Porsche on board as a full works F1 team for the first time since 1962 – although it provided the title-winning TAG-Porsches to McLaren 1984-87 as well as the less successful V12 to Arrows in 1991”.

“It would also give Red Bull the potential to return to the title-winning pomp it enjoyed during the frozen-spec naturally-aspirated (V8) era,” he said.

IndyCar long shot Power still ‘very determined’
Will Power is one of seven drivers with a chance of becoming this year’s IndyCar champion at California’s Sonoma Raceway this weekend. But the veteran from Toowoomba will need to win the final double-points race, and have woe befall four drivers ahead of him.

His team-mate, Josef Newgarden - a 26-year-old American in his first season with Team Penske - leads the championship by three points from New Zealander Scott Dixon. Also in front of Power on the points table are Penske’s two other drivers, Brazilian Helio Castroneves and Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, the defending champion.

Power, winner of three of the 16 races so far this season, and with a great record at Sonoma, trails Newgarden by 68 points. The other, even more remote mathematical longshots to take out the title are Americans Alex Rossi and Graham Rahal.

The Penske drivers have Chevrolet power, while the other three contenders are powered by Honda engines.

Power’s chances haven’t been helped by a knee injury sustained when surfing earlier in the week.

While Power has been limping around the paddock at Sonoma, he insists the knee won’t be a great burden over the weekend. “As long as it’s bent, and in the car you’re always bent-knee, it’s no problem – it’s just straightening it is the issue,” Power said.

“I’m just focusing on getting the best out of the weekend.

“I’m really focusing on getting pole, winning the race – then I put myself in the best possible position for something to happen to the other guys.

“That’s all you can do.

“Maybe a little less pressure on me because you’re not right there, but I’m still very determined.”

While Dixon goes into the weekend behind Newgarden, the Kiwi has a magnificent record in Indy racing – titles in 2003, ’08, ’13 and ’15, runner-up twice and third four times – and will be quick to pounce on any opportunity for a fifth crown.

There are reports of Dixon’s team owner Chip Ganassi scaling back from four cars to two next year and going with an all-New Zealander line-up. Brendon Hartley, a Porsche sports car teammate of Mark Webber and a Le Mans winner – is tipped to become Dixon’s teammate.

10th anniversary of the great McRae’s death
Frenchman Sebastien Loeb has been the most successful driver in World Rally Championship history, with 78 event wins and nine straight world titles, but late Scotsman Colin McRae has arguably been the most popular.

It is 10 years today since McRae, the 1995 world champion, died when his helicopter crashed near his home in Lanark, also killing his five-year-old son, Johnny, and two family friends.

McRae won 25 WRC rounds and remains the youngest driver to have been World Rally Champion – at 27.

He was loved for his motto, “If in doubt, flat out”, and the video game bearing his name became a bestseller.

Meanwhile, Citroen team principal Yves Matton insists a possible reunion next year of Loeb and today’s WRC superstar Sebastien Ogier would not mean a repeat of the volatility of their previous time as teammates.

Citroen, whose C3 has been hugely disappointing this year, is trying to lure Ogier from the M-Sport Ford team for which he could clinch his fifth world title at Rally Australia on November 16-19.
The French manufacturer also has hopes of wooing back Loeb, albeit part-time, from rallycross, marathon rallies and circuit racing for Peugeot.

“It’s not the same story as in 2011,” Mr Matton said. “If Sebastien Ogier joins us he comes to win the championship, but if Sebastien Loeb comes it’s only for some rallies – not for the whole championship.

“For Citroen it can be interesting to have them in the team again.”

He confirmed Northern Irishman Kris Meeke is still contracted to Citroen for a full season next year.

Yaris enters the ARC’s tight fight
The Australian Rally Championship resumes this weekend, with just three points between the two young stars fighting it out: Toyota’s Harry Bates and Subaru’s reigning champion Molly Taylor.

Bates will debut a Yaris at Rally South Australia and, after shaking-down his all-wheel-drive, 1.6-litre turbocharged car this morning, reported it performed “flawlessly”.

Built to AP4 (Asia-Pacific) regulations, the left-hand-drive Yaris has replaced the Corolla S2000 in which Bates has had the upper hand to date this season. He revealed the build of the new car at his father’s Neal Bates Motorsport workshop in Canberra had been “stressful to say the least”.

“It has come together in the end, but all at the last minute,” Bates said.

“A few people have said that we are crazy to debut a new car in the middle of the season, but it has been a long time in the planning and we were always going to debut the Yaris as soon as it was ready.”

Rival Taylor is counting on familiarity with her WRX STI paying off in the event in the Mt Crawford Forest near Adelaide and the Barossa Valley – including four night stages on Saturday.

“The pressure’s on Harry to maintain the top spot, so we’re keenly focused on winning all the one percenters that present over the course of a weekend and that can cumulatively mean a lot,” she said.

Coffs Harbour’s Nathan Quinn remains an outside chance for the title. He trails Bates by 36 points but has been buoyed by some $20,000 worth of upgrades to his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX for this round, courtesy of the generosity of a bunch of anonymous “crazy Irish” supporters in Sydney.

Multiple national champion Eli Evans is missing from Rally SA though following the death of his mother.

‘Queen’ out in the cold, ‘King’ out of favour too
A couple of bombshells in NASCAR this week – and they were somewhat related. High-profile Danica Patrick is losing her drive with Stewart-Haas Racing, while Richard ‘The King’ Petty had an ugly spat with a sponsor.

After seven years in IndyCar racing, including one race victory and almost another in the Indianapolis 500, Danica Patrick is coming to the end of her sixth season in NASCAR, without a win from 180 starts.

The resident of Scottsdale, Arizona has racked-up seven top 10 finishes, but none in the top five. Her best was sixth at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 2014 and she captured pole position for the 2013 Daytona 500.

Patrick broke the news she was leaving the Ford team, headed by triple NASCAR Cup champion Tony Stewart, on her Facebook page, saying it was “due to a new sponsorship arrangement in 2018”.

Which actually turned out to be Smithfield Foods moving its money from Richard Petty Motorsports to Stewart-Haas Racing, which results in driver Aric Almirola, transferring with that sponsorship.

Petty, winner of a record 200 Cup races and a seven-time champion fumed over Smithfield’s move.

"We have had numerous discussions with Smithfield Foods regarding the extension of our relationship dating as far back as February,” he said.

“Over the past few months, Smithfield had continually told me they wanted to be with us, and I recently shook hands on a deal to extend our relationship.

"I come from a time when we did major deals with sponsors like STP on a handshake.

“I'm sad to see this is where we are now.

“This decision is very unexpected, and we are extremely disappointed in this late and abrupt change of direction.

"Losing a sponsor of this magnitude in September is a significant setback to RPM, but [team co-owner] Andy [Murstein] and I are committed to moving forward.

“We have a lot of great partners who have expressed their continued support, and our fans will rally around.

“We've been around since 1949, and we'll be around a lot longer."

However Smithfield president and chief executive Kenneth M Sullivan had a very different take on proceedings.

“We are extremely disappointed that RPM has chosen to disparage Smithfield – its lead sponsor – after five years and tens of millions of dollars of unwavering financial support, despite years of sub-par performance on the track,” Mr Sullivan said.

“RPM’s claims of a ‘handshake deal’ to extend our sponsorship are unequivocally and patently false.

“Smithfield’s numerous discussions with RPM over the past several months focused exclusively around one issue: RPM’s inability to deliver on the track and the organisation’s repeated failure to present a plan to address its lack of competitiveness.

“Smithfield is a performance driven company and we demand performance from the people we do business with. For that reason – and that reason alone – Smithfield decided not to renew its contract with RPM when it expires at the end of this year.

“It is very unfortunate and disheartening that RPM has chosen to disseminate false statements regarding our communications to NASCAR fans who we have supported wholeheartedly with more than a $100 million investment in the sport over the last several years.”