MOTORSPORT: Honda and McLaren on the rocks

The Honda-McLaren ‘marriage’ in Formula 1 has reached breaking point after the Japanese giant failed to deliver the promised power unit upgrade in time for this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.

McLaren, the second oldest and second most successful team in F1 history, has not won a race for five years and, so far this season, is one of 10 teams yet to score a single championship point.

Now in its third year of running power units supplied by Honda, McLaren is clearly looking for an alternative engine, saying “we can’t wait forever,” Disappointing for both parties because, at first, there were hopes the re-uniting of McLaren and Honda would rekindle the championship-dominating glory days the team enjoyed with drivers Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

Lead driver Fernando Alonso, a dual F1 World Champion, is now publicly threatening to walk away from McLaren at the end of this season if it does not win by September. Keen to keep Alonso motivated, McLaren agreed to the Spaniard skipping F1’s premier event, the Monaco Grand Prix, to compete in – and at one stage lead - the Indianapolis 500 IndyCar race.

Alonso has effectively given three months’ notice – and there’s next to no chance of McLaren-Honda winning in that time.

As much as Alonso covets a third world title, he’s also not keen on the plans of new F1 owner Liberty Media to expand the calendar to 25 GPs per year.

With his 36th birthday coming up at the end of July, it’s obvious Alonso’s days in F1 are almost up.

The factory-backed Renault team took Alonso to his F1 titles in 2005 and ’06 and would love him back for 2018 and beyond – but realistically the French squad offers no more chance of success than his current employer.

So, aiming at winning the Indy 500 and 24 Hours of Le Mans have become more realistic ambitions for Alonso.

McLaren’s only powerplant option in the short term appears to be as a Mercedes customer (which doesn’t appeal to Alonso), unless the Volkswagen Group can finally be enticed to enter F1 (unlikely before 2021, if at all) - unless Zak Brown, the American who now heads McLaren’s commercial operations, can pull-off a miracle.

Brown - who orchestrated Alonso’s Indy 500 drive admits the team and its Japanese engine supplier are coming to a “fork in the road”.

Design of F1 cars for next season is about to begin and McLaren’s engineers need to know what power unit to incorporate.

As well as its V6 hybrid power units, Honda reportedly contributes as much as $US100 million ($A132.6 million) to McLaren’s annual budget.

However the clearly frustrated Brown now says that input “doesn’t have quite the commercial benefit it might appear from the outside”.

“Honda’s working very hard, but they seem a bit lost,” Brown told newsagency Reuters this week. "We were only told recently that we wouldn’t have the upgrade coming (for Montreal) ... and we don’t have a definitive timeline, which is concerning because the pain is great and we can’t sit around forever.

“We were eagerly awaiting this upgrade, as were our drivers (the second is Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne) and it’s a big disappointment that it’s not coming. It’s not lack of effort, but they are struggling to get it to come together.”

Yusuke Hasegawa, the head of Honda’s F1 project, is sticking to the corporate play book and says Honda won’t introduce upgrades until it’s sure they are an improvement on what has been a hugely uncompetitive and unreliable unit.

Meanwhile, Brown told Reuters: “The executive committee [of McLaren] have now given us our marching orders. We’re not going to go into another year like this, in hope.

“I don’t want to get into what our options are. Our preference is to win the world championship with Honda, but at some point you need to make a decision as to whether that’s achievable – and we have serious concerns.

“Missing upgrades, and upgrades not delivering to the level we were told they were going to, you can only take that so long. And we’re near our limit.

“There’s lots of things that go into the decision and we’re entering that window now of ‘which way do you go when you come to the fork in the road’.”

Irrespective of McLaren’s decision on power units, Honda will remain in F1 as, from next year, it will supply power units to the Swiss Sauber team, a team which itself has survived a near collapse after a takeover by Scandinavian interests.

Brown claims that McLaren could win with a customer (Mercedes) engine, although there is no evidence to support that – Williams and Force India have not been able to do so in this hybrid era against the might of the factory Mercedes team, the rejuvenated Ferrari, or even Red Bull, which has had five wins with under-powered Renault units (although none this year).
Ricciardo upbeat returning to Canada
The Canadian GP marks the third anniversary of the first F1 victory by Red Bull’s Australian driver, and carsales.com.au global ambassador, Daniel Ricciardo.

While Ricciardo is upbeat about returning to Canada, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner makes no secret that Montreal’s Gilles Villeneuve circuit and the following races in Azerbaijan and Austria will be extremely tough.
Wolff slams door on Mercedes’ exit as an Irish joke
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has dismissed comments by Irish larrikin commentator - and former team owner - Eddie Jordan - suggesting the three-pointed star brand will quit F1 at the end of next year (2018).

Jordan said his remarks followed a conversation with Dieter Zetsche, Daimler chairman and head of Mercedes-Benz cars, at the Monaco GP.

But Wolff claimed: “Monaco is a place where people like to party and it seems like somebody did a bit too much of that.

“The reports are completely baseless and reflect nothing more than the mischievous speculation of one individual.

“Mercedes has firm contracts [in F1] until the end of 2020 and is currently in discussions about the next competitive cycle with the sport's new owners (Liberty Media).”

Veteran F1 scribe Joe Saward this week blogged comments made by Zetsche last year.

“It’s difficult to scientifically develop a correlation between our efforts and success in motor sport and our success on the business side, but I’m totally convinced that it is not by accident that in the last three years our brand has developed a fantastic momentum and coolness factor – and this resulted ultimately in lots of sales,” Zetsche said.

“At the same time, we took off in motor sport and I think that is not by accident, there is a strong correlation in both directions.

“We are convinced that the Mercedes brand is defined on the one hand by its intelligence and coolness that is a factor that is based on rationality, and on the other side emotions. Motor sport represents both. On the one hand it is pure emotion, but on the other requires intelligence of the best technical solutions at the same time.

“There are hundreds of millions of viewers for every race on TV screens around the globe and this is comparable only with events like the World Cup or Olympic Games. The only difference is that it is not every fourth year but this year 21 times in one year. That’s a great platform and therefore extremely important for us.”

Saward stated that Mercedes sales “have effectively doubled since 2009”, sales for subsidiary Mercedes-AMG sales rose 44.1 percent last year and had “more than tripled in the past three years”. The main Mercedes companies had enjoyed six consecutive record years, with double-digit growth in each, he said.

Pointing out how the technology from Merc’s F1 activity “is now working its way through into the company’s product range”, Saward also said that Ola Kallenius, tipped to succeed Zetsche when he retires at the end of 2019, is also a strong supporter of motorsport.

He noted that Kallenius spent time at Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines in Britain and at McLaren Automotive during the days when Mercedes exclusively supplied F1 engines to McLaren.

Money pouring in for second Bathurst circuit
The proposed second race track at Bathurst, NSW – adjacent to Mount Panorama – the $52.4 million Velocity Park project, is moving closer to reality.

The NSW Government has now committed $15 million to the project, which would include a 4.58km circuit for car and motorcycle racing on land west of McPhillamy Park and Reid Park in the Mt Panorama circuit.

Bathurst’s Regional Council has pledged $10 million, while application has been made for $10 million from the Federal Government, with hopes of another $10 million from it, as well as another $5 million from NSW coffers.

A tender process is underway for the circuit design, with the winner (from five submissions including both Australian and overseas companies) expected next month.

Industrial and commercial development also is foreseen in the project.