MOTORSPORT: Honda and Renault green lights

Renault, which has powered Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel to world championship glory the past three years and is committed to F1’s new turbo era, has signed up too as technical partner to the proposed new electric open-wheeler series to be called Formula E.

These developments come as Australia’s V8 Supercars debut in America this weekend, already with Nissans and AMG Mercedes-Benzes added to the old-fashioned Holden-Ford battle, and now Mark Skaife talking of another one or two brands in the field.

Skaife and his V8 Supercar cohorts see these as the Cars of the Future, but Honda and Renault see things very differently.

We will leave the V8 Supercar scene today largely to colleague Bruce Newton, who is in Texas for the Austin 400, while focusing here on the Honda and Renault developments.

It pained the Japanese company greatly to pull out of Formula One at the end of 2008, amid the global financial crisis and after the failure of its efforts at complete team ownership with the takeover of what had begun as Craig Pollock and Jacques Villeneuve’s British American Racing.

And Honda has found, with the introduction of 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 engines imminent in F1 in place of the existing 2.4-litre V8s, that it just can’t stay away because of the new potential for technology transfer from the race track to its road cars.

Honda won’t make the starting grid for the first season of the turbos but will be there in 2015.

“Formula One is about to introduce new regulations that require a downsized engine with a turbocharger and energy recovery systems, which fits better with environmental technologies for mass-production vehicles,” Honda president Takanobu Ito said in announcing his company’s comeback.

“As a result, more than ever we can expect more feedback from racing machines to mass-production vehicles and some feedback from mass-production vehicles back to racing machines.

“As we started to see a better match between the new direction of F1 and the direction of Honda’s product development, our young engineers who will shape the future of Honda began expressing their passion to take on the new challenge of F1 racing.

“Honda has been a company which grows by participating and winning in racing. We must re-acknowledge the fact that so many fans and customers around the world supported us precisely because they were inspired by a Honda that challenges and wins in racing.”

How inspirational it was: 44 GP wins and eight world titles (four drivers’ and for constructors’) in the late 1980s and early ’90s; with the McLaren and Honda technical brilliance complemented by the driving genius of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. And in 1988 those ingredients combined to produce 15 wins in the season’s 16 races – a dominance of the sport greater than ever before or since.

Next year McLaren will complete a 20-year association with Mercedes as its engine supplier, but now that the German company has its own, improving F1 team the British outfit founded 50 years ago by the late New Zealander Bruce McLaren will be even more a customer for that final season of the ‘marriage’ than now.

But, always with a bigger, longer-term picture, McLaren’s sights will be on 2015 and beyond.

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh said F1 had been “absolutely slow to adapt and to change to the new challenges which are relevant to the needs of society… downsizing turbocharging, heavier hybrid content” but that “these are areas in which I know Honda will excel”.

Honda long has been the premier manufacturer in two-wheel MotoGP, it also competes in Indy racing in America and is the defending champion engine supplier at this month’s Indianapolis 500, and now it successfully campaigning a 1.6-litre [four-cylinder] turbocharged engine in the World Touring Car Championship.

Ito-san admitted that “it was very disappointing that we had to withdraw from F1 the last time without accomplishing satisfactory results”.

“I regret that we could not meet the expectations of our fans,” he said.

Now Honda is coming back with the partner that together created the most super of teams – and will supply another team, even two, if required.

Jenson Button, who scored the sole GP victory of Honda’s previous F1 campaign, won the world title in 2009 with its successor (Mercedes-powered, BrawnGP) and is now a McLaren driver, perhaps summed it up best.

“McLaren-Honda. I know how much passion, success and pride are encapsulated within just those two words,” Button said.

F1’s commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone has opposed the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) imposing the new engines, fearing they won’t sound as good as the 12 and 10-cylinder cars of the past and the V8s of recent times. However, the BBC’s chief F1 writer Andrew Benson has said that Honda’s return “appears to be a vindication [of the new engine rules], and there are rumours other companies are considering entering the sport as well”.

Benson listed Toyota (which also withdrew in 2008 without a single win from its massive spending), Hyundai, VW/Audi and even Ford, which ruled from the late 1960s until the early 1980s, as possibilities.     

McLaren already has been involved in the consortium developing the 780kg, 220kmh car with French company Spark Racing Technology and now Renault has signed on as a technical partner.

“Renault has demonstrated a unique commitment to zero-emission mobility, with a range of four cars available for sale,” said the French automotive group’s vice-president of corporate planning, product planning and programs, Philippe Klein.

“Renault in Europe, and the Renault-Nissan Alliance worldwide, has gained a position of EV sales leader. Formula E is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate the excellence and the reliability of our EV solutions.

“We believe that motorsport is an efficient manner to promote the efficiency of new technologies and we’re eager to use that single-seater in Formula E to show our technology is the best.”

Renault Sport Technologies managing director Patrice Ratti added:“Renault’s expertise in electric powertrain design and integration acquired both in production EV and in F1 makes Renault Sport a natural partner for Spark in this exciting Formula E project”.

“Engineers from Renault Sport F1 and Renault Sport Technologies will collaborate with Spark Racing Technology to optimize the electric and electronic layout and performance of the powertrain,” Ratti said.

“Our experience will be particularly valuable to ensure the safety and reliability of the car.”

Formula E chief executive Alejandro Agag said the new championship’s organizer and Renault “share the same commitment to innovative technology and sustainable motoring”.

“Not only is Renault one of the world’s leading car manufacturers, with a very successful motorsport pedigree, it is also a pioneer for electric vehicles, being the first full-range car manufacturer to market zero-emission vehicles.

“To have a manufacturer of this calibre onboard is a great testament to the growing appeal of the FIA Formula E Championship.”

While Formula E hopes to promote general awareness of sustainability in motoring it has said it also wants to serve as a framework for research and development of electric vehicles and accelerate general interest in them for personal use.

Spanish real estate developer Enrique Banuelos is reported to have committed almost $150 million towards the Formula E project.

Eight cities (London, Rome, Los Angeles, Miami, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing and Putrajaya in Malaysia) already are committed to hosting rounds of the championship.

Announcement of a ninth city reportedly is close, with plans to add rounds in Africa and Oceania from 2015.

While colleague Bruce Newton is there and best placed to report on the action and atmosphere at the Circuit of the Americas, a couple of observations from the lead-up to the Texas event.

Australian Associated Press correspondent Guy Hand drew a brilliant analogy between the attempt to sell Russian-made Lada cars in Australia many years ago and the international expansion push by V8 Supercars.

“If you’re lucky, they start. They stall. They stop. Eventually, they disappear altogether,” Hand wrote, before turning to how the series organizers believe Austin to be a far better proposition than the failed events in Shanghai in 2005, Bahrain for four years and Abu Dhabi for three years.

However successful V8 Supercar racing is in America this weekend and beyond, there is no way it will come anywhere near the claim by News Ltd correspondent James Phelps that “this week’s Austin 400 will reach a combined live audience of 100 million in North America”.

Texas motorsport and media authority Forrest Bond reminded us after that article that “the only thing a third of the [American] population watches is the Super Bowl”.

“I gather last year’s audience for Speed Channel telecasts [in America of V8 Supercar racing] generally was less than 100,000,” Bond said.

“I’d be surprised if 100,000 watched.

“V8s are all but invisible here, though Speed has been promoting them.”

Now they are close to racing on American soil and surely will win extra fans, although Bond said he would not be venturing to the Circuit of the Americas to watch them.

Nor, it seems, will dual V8 Supercar champion from a decade ago Marcos Ambrose be making a trip from his NASCAR base at Charlotte, North Carolina, for any part of the weekend.

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