MOTORSPORT: Honda going nowhere fast in F1

The Australian Grand Prix is two weeks away. There’s only one more day of testing left (tonight, Australian time) before the new Formula 1 cars are packed up in Europe for the flight to Melbourne. And Honda, a company that says it has racing in its DNA, is in deep bother.

After seven days of testing in Barcelona the Honda-powered McLaren MCL32 is no closer to its main Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault-powered opposition than it was last year.

Already it has gone through five power units – one more than it will be allowed per car in this season of 20 GPs.

McLaren-Honda’s superstar driver Fernando Alonso said after Wednesday’s testing that the Japanese company’s revised V6 hybrid power unit, now following the Mercedes direction after two poor years with its own concept, had “no power and no reliability”.

McLaren’s racing director Eric Boullier admits that the strain in relations between the team and its engine supplier are at “maximum”.

The MCL has not chalked up anything like the mileage of its rivals, let alone at anything like the speed.

“If you are not running fast enough you do not put the right energy into the tyres, you don’t put the right energy in the brakes, your ride-height targets are different,” Boullier said.

“There are a lot of consequences to running 15 or 18km/h slower in a straight line.”

Alonso says it’s worse than that – that the MCL32 has been up to 30km/h down on the Barcelona straight.

The BBC’s chief F1 writer, Andrew Benson, reported that it was clocked at 26.4km/h slower than the Mercedes W08 in the hands of world champion Nico Rosberg’s replacement, Valtteri Bottas.

Honda’s F1 chief Yusuke Hasegawa has flown back to Sakura in Japan to oversee refinement of the power units for the McLarens that Alonso and Belgian newcomer, Stoffel Vandoore, will race in Melbourne.

While pre-season F1 testing is notoriously hard to assess -- made more so this year by the four compounds of Pirelli’s new wider tyres (medium, soft, super-soft and ultra-soft) -- indications are that Ferrari’s SF70H may be the main challenger to Mercedes, the world champions of all three previous seasons of the hybrid era.

“They [Ferrari] are very close, if not faster,” Mercedes’ main man, and triple world champion, Lewis Hamilton said.

Overnight Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time of the seven days, 0.328sec ahead of Hamilton, with both doing their best laps on the ultra-soft rubber.

Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo, the new global ambassador for carsales.com.au, said that Ferrari “looks strong” but is confident that his Red Bull Racing “will get there” by the time of the Melbourne race on March 26.

Ricciardo has completed his four days in Red Bull’s Renault-powered RB13 and said that they had not made as much progress as hoped last night.

“We got a little bit confused with some set-up things,” he said.

“We certainly haven’t showed Ferrari’s pace yet. Our true pace is closer, but we’re not quite on their level. We will see a little [more yet] from both sides – the power unit and the car [chassis] will have some small new parts [in Melbourne],” Ricciardo said.

As concerns remain about the difficulty in overtaking with the more aerodynamic cars this year, and that the power units still don’t sound like traditional F1 engines, the world head of motorsport, Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) president Jean Todt, says there is no turning away from the quieter, more fuel-efficient hybrids.

“We have a responsibility to run an organisation monitored by global society – and global society will not accept that [he noisy, naturally-aspirated 12, 10 or eight-cylinder engines],” Todt said.

“I’m sure if you said, ‘Let’s go back to engines from 10 years ago’, many manufacturers would not support such a move.

“I’m convinced a minimum of three out of four [Mercedes, Renault and Honda] would leave,” he said.

While Todt admitted the sport had yet to find an ideal solution, Ross Brawn (sporting chief for F1’s new American controlling shareholder, Liberty Media) acknowledged that fans still wanted more ear-piercing F1 cars.

The appointment of Brawn – a great engineer and tactician with Benetton, Ferrari and Mercedes, as well as 2009 world champion team owner with his own outfit – has been widely welcomed. That said, he inevitably will face a huge task in getting agreement on any changes he wants to implement.
Power and Penske hot for Indy season
The 17-race IndyCar series starts on the streets of St Petersburg in Florida this weekend, with Australia’s Will Power trying to regain the title he won in 2014.

Power is joined at Team Penske this season by young American Josef Newgarden. His other teammates are the reigning champion, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, and Brazilian Helio Castroneves, who has never been champion in almost two decades but has won the Indianapolis 500 three times.

Dumped Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya will drive a fifth Penske entry at the Indy 500.

Chevrolet-powered Team Penske won 10 of last year’s 16 races and filled the top three positions in the championship, with Power runner-up.

Its main rival, Chip Ganassi Racing, has switched from Chevy to Honda power this season.

Eight teams remain following the closure of expatriate Australian Kevin Kalkhoven’s KV Racing and aerodynamic development has been frozen this year.

Of the 21 cars starting the season (one less than last year’s regular field), 13 have Honda engines with the other eight Chev-powered.

IndyCar chief executive Mark Miles claims a third manufacturer is in the wings, believed to be European – and thought most likely to be Alfa-Romeo. It would not arrive in the series until 2019.
WRC gets up and dirty in Mexico
The World Rally Championship will be on gravel for the first time this year in Mexico this weekend after the northern wintry conditions in Sweden and Monte Carlo.

It will be the first of nine WRC gravel rallies this year, with the loose surfaced Rally Australia at Coffs Harbour completing the season on November 16-19.

While there were to have been two runs over a 1.57km stage in Mexico City’s Zocalo Square overnight, the event will be based at Leon, 400km to the south-east, with conditions extremely hot as well as dusty.

The altitude (up to 2746 metres above sea level) is expected to sap the engines of the Toyota Yaris, Ford Fiesta, Hyundai i20 and Citroen C3 of 20-25 per cent of their power.

Although Finn Jari-Matti Latvala won for Toyota in Sweden after French four-time world champion Sebatien Ogier’s victory at his first rally in the M-Sport Ford Fiesta at ‘The Monte’, Hyundai’s Belgian Thierry Neuville’s 12 stage victories in the first two events was twice as many as Latvala and four times Ogier’s tally. However, Neuville crashed out both times.

Toyota team boss Tommi Makinen says this year’s cars “are very close together”.

“This is a very good situation for the championship. We need to have this kind of close competition,” Makinen said
Bathurst 6 Hour deadline looms
Entries close today for the Bathurst 6 Hour production car race at Easter, with the strong prospect of a capacity 72-car(!!!) grid or very close to it.

More than a dozen (at least 13, perhaps 14 or even more) makes will be represented across the six classes.

Might there yet be a new Ford Mustang in the field on Sunday, April 16? Doubtful this time, although there will be several Focus RSs on debut.

An interesting competitor announced this week is American Michele Abbate, who only turned 19 yesterday but already is a dual Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) champion.

It will be Abbate’s international debut and she will be in a Toyota 86 for four-time Australian production car class champions Pedders Racing, crewed by Motorsports Training Australia students.

In the US she’s a factory driver for Scion Racing. The Scion FR-S is the same chassis as the Toyota 86 and Subaru BRZ.
Slow progress but lots of tracks on horizon
While Supercars battles opposition to the temporary street circuit in Newcastle for its season finale moved from Sydney, plans for two permanent circuits north of the NSW capital remain on the radar.

CASAR (Community Automotive Sport and Recreation) Park – close to Lake Macquarie on the Central Coast – has received all development approvals.

The plans include a 3.5km racetrack on 115 hectares of land bordering the Sydney-Newcastle (F3) freeway and train line on the northern edge of the Wyong Shire.

Even longer in the pipeline has been a proposed 2.9km circuit at Balickera, about 25km north of Newcastle on the Pacific Highway and 12km north of Raymond Terrace.

Port Stephens Council approved the project, site of the former 3.8km Ringwood Park circuit, in 2013 and a construction certificate has been granted.

Hunter region businessman and motorsport enthusiast Matthew Higgins says the ‘Circuit Italia’ he envisages would have “fantastic uphill sections and heart-stopping downhill high-speed corners”.