MOTORSPORT: Hammer's time, Rosberg rocked by penalty

Only one point separates the Mercedes drivers in the Formula 1 World Championship now, while Daniel Ricciardo is back up to fourth – but far from satisfied.

While outpaced by teenage teammate Max Verstappen in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Ricciardo has plenty to be pleased about, although his Renault-powered Red Bull RB12 has been mysteriously slow in the past eight days.

A couple of other Australians had cause to be thrilled at the weekend after successes at two of the world’s other great circuits.

Thomas Randle, a 20-year-old from Melbourne, won a race in the British Formula 3 Championship held at Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps circuit. If that’s not confusing enough, the cars in the series are essentially Formula 4s! (The other two races at the round were won by Lando Norris, the 16-year-old British racer who won New Zealand’s Toyota open-wheeler series last summer.)

And Sydney’s Ryan Briscoe won again in one of Ford’s new GTs at Mosport in Canada, a former F1 circuit now officially called Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

This was the Blue Oval’s third straight class victory in North America’s IMSA sports car series. It also won its class at the Le Mans 24-Hour in France last month, although the car Briscoe and British driver Richard Westbrook drive was third there.

Toowoomba’s Will Power has finished second in the latest Indycar round at Iowa Speedway for Team Penske.

And Roger Penske’s 2012 NASCAR champion Brad Keselowski has won for the second week in a row – and the fourth time this year – in the Sprint Cup, driving a Ford that held off the Toyota of Carl Edwards even though Keselowski told his crew he was out of fuel with more than a lap to go.

Meanwhile, Toyota Gazoo Racing, which is developing the Japanese manufacturer’s Yaris for next year’s World Rally Championship, has lost its technical director on the project, Michael Zotos.

Autosport has reported that “it is understood he was finding it hard to work with project chief Tommi Makinen” – the four-time world champion for whom he was an engineer in the defunct Subaru WRC team. Two other key team members have also left recently.

Hamilton motors on to more history
Lewis Hamilton has now won four of the past five F1 races after Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg had won the first four.

The only other victory this season was by Max Verstappen in his first race with Red Bull Racing at the Spanish GP after the Mercedes pair crashed out on the opening lap in one of three collisions between them in the past couple of months.

Hamilton led all but one lap at Silverstone last night in a race that began behind a safety car because of wet weather, although the drivers were angry they weren’t let loose sooner.

Rosberg crossed the line second, but a 10sec penalty imposed four hours later for assistance he received over the radio from his pit crew (on how to handle a gearbox problem) relegated him to third, behind Verstappen, and slashed his championship advantage over Hamilton to the solitary point.

Rosberg had been advised from the Mercedes pit wall to avoid using the seventh of his eight gears in the closing laps.

The team will appeal the penalty and seek to have him restored to second place in the race results on the basis that, under this year’s curbs on radio communications, that advice fell within an exemption when there is an “indication of a critical problem with the car”.

“Any message of this sort may only be used if failure of a component or system is imminent and potentially terminal,” the rules state.

Mercedes team principal claimed Rosberg’s car “would have been stuck in seventh gear [without the advice] and that would have been the end, probably”.

Hamilton made history as the first driver to win three years in a row at Silverstone.

The great Scottish legend Jim Clark won four British GPs in a row in the 1960s, but only two of those were at Silverstone. However, Clark notched a third Silverstone victory in 1967 for a total of five British GP successes.

French great Alain Prost also won five British GPs – and all were at Silverstone, between 1983 and 1993.

Hamilton has a fourth victory from Silverstone, in 2008 (his second season in F1), while Nigel Mansell also won there four times between 1986 and 1992.

Hamilton’s latest victory was the 47th of his F1 career, with only Michael Schumacher (91 wins) and Alain Prost (51) ahead of him.

Six GPs in the points not enough for Ricciardo
Since his promotion to Red Bull Racing, from the energy drink company’s junior team Toro Rosso, Max Verstappen has scored 77 points – a tally topped only by Hamilton with 110 points. However, Daniel Ricciardo has scored points in the past six GPs – the recent ‘record’ streak in F1.

Ricciardo’s fourth place at Silverstone has lifted him from fifth to fourth in the championship, ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and just behind Kimi Raikkonen, who has been retained by Ferrari for next season.

And Red Bull has closed to within six points of Ferrari in the constructors’ championship, but Ricciardo – third in the driver standings early in the season – is sick of fourth places.

“For the team and for the points it (Silverstone) was really good,” Ricciardo said.

“We gained a bit on Ferrari, which is nice, but for me it was lonely and a bit boring. We lost a lot of time with the virtual safety car and that was just bad luck.

“It [the safety car] just came at the wrong time for me and we lost the position to [Sergio] Perez [the Mexican driver with the Force India-Mercedes team] and then more than 10sec behind the leaders. Then not stopping again for the rest of the race you can’t catch this much.

“It is what it is now and hopefully Budapest [in Hungary on July 22-24] works better,” Ricciardo said.

Questions were being asked at the weekend about whether Verstappen was starting to get on top of Ricciardo.

Silverstone was the first time in 10 GPs this year that Ricciardo had been out-qualified by his teammate (it was Daniil Kyvat before Verstappen), and the Dutch youngster has finished on the podium in the past two races and Ricciardo not – and Verstappen is only 10 points behind the Aussie now.

Ricciardo’s car lacked drive at the Austrian GP the Sunday before Silverstone, and he reported a similar problem at Silverstone.

Don’t be surprised if a fault is found in his RB12 – which may explain his lack of speed in comparison to Verstappen on race day at Austria’s A1-Ring and throughout the Silverstone event.

Ripper result for Randle at Spa
Thomas Randle, the youngster who won at Spa at the weekend, was the 2014 Australian Formula Ford Champion and runner-up in last year’s inaugural Australian Formula 4 Championship.

The Spa victory was his second in his debut season in the British F3 Championship. The first was at Rockingham in Northamptonshire in May.

Randle is driving for Douglas Motorsport and is third in the series with 33 points – behind only the Carlin team’s Ricky Collard on 354 and Double R Racing’s Brazilian, Mateus Leist on 350.

In the second of the three races in the championship at the famous Belgian circuit over the weekend he started ninth and made up four places on the opening lap – two at La Source and two through Eau Rouge and on the Kemmel Straight.

He overtook long-time leader Toby Sowery on the last lap, having trailed him by 1.6sec with three of the nine laps to go.

“I made a good start and really tried to keep my head down, keep it clean,” Randle said.

“On the last lap I was hoping I could get on to the back of Toby Sowery and we had a great battle. It all started at the beginning of the final lap -- Toby tried to hold me up so I wouldn’t get a good run, which is what anyone would do in that position.

“The tow really helped me and about 300 metres from the chicane I was ahead.

“Once I got into the lead I was just focusing on putting in a really good middle sector so he wouldn’t have a chance to get me into the final chicane.”

Randle had finished only ninth in the first race of the round and was fifth in the third and final race of the weekend.

Hat-trick for Ford’s GT in IMSA series
While Chevrolet Corvette Daytona Prototypes filled the first four places in the latest round of the IMSA Sports Car Championship in Canada, Ryan Briscoe and Richard Westbrook’s Ford GT upstaged the Corvette C7.Rs in the GT class.

IMSA (the International Motor Sports Association) had made some rule change regarding weight and engine power designed to slow the Ford and speed up the C7.Rs and Porsche 911 RSRs, which had been about 1.5sec a lap slower at Watkins Glen in upstate New York the previous week.

While the adjustments largely worked, Ford Chip Ganassi Racing’s pit strategy produced the third victory in North America for Briscoe and Westbrook.

They ran the last 80 minutes of the race, which went more than two hours and 40 minutes, on the same set of Michelin tyres. That gave them track position over their main rivals, who took on fresh tyres in that time.

“It was a great call by the crew,” Westbrook said.

“Winning becomes a habit, they say, and it feels like it now.”

However, second-placed Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner in the best of the C7.Rs still head Briscoe and Westbrook in the series points, with the next race in Connecticut (where Briscoe lives) at Lime Rock Park on July 23.

Power on the charge in IndyCar
Will Power made a late charge in the IndyCar race at Iowa Speedway, overtaking New Zealander Scott Dixon and Frenchman Simon Pagenaud to finish second to American Josef Newgarden.

Power claimed Dixon on lap 295 of the 300 and Penske teammate Pagenaud a lap later.

The Aussie had won the previous two races in the series, at Detroit’s Belle Isle and at Road America in Wisconsin.

After missing the opening race of the season with an inner-ear infection, Power is third in the championship (75 points behind Pagenaud), with Newgarden now second and two points ahead of Power.

Six races remain, with another next weekend in Toronto, Canada.

Newgarden will not be allowed to participate in the rescheduled Texas Motor Speedway race when it resumes, having crashed out in the race aborted last month and in which he suffered a broken collarbone and right hand.

The 282 laps that Newgarden led at Iowa was an all-time IndyCar race record.