MOTORSPORT: Iceman takes the cake in F1

And Australians, lovers of the underdog, saw an underdog win – but not the one they wanted.

Instead of Mark Webber from the front row of the grid beside his triple world champion teammate Sebastian Vettel, it was Kimi Raikkonen in a Lotus with the same Renault engine as the Red Bull pair who took the chequered flag first.

As so often, too often, Webber’s chance of winning effectively was over within seconds of the red lights going out at the start. At the first turn he was seventh. At the finish, after four pit stops (one of them slow), he was sixth.

Raikkonen had started seventh and, the Lotus E21 chassis treating its tyres much more kindly that any its rivals, made only two pit stops to the three of the drivers who shared the podium with him -- Fernando Alonso in second place for Ferrari, and Vettel in third.

At the end of last week we published a piece here about the money that swirls around in big motor racing, especially F1. Refreshingly, Raikkonen’s victory proved that money isn’t everything. The team with which he is now in his second season operates on the smallest budget of the top five teams in F1.

It did so previously too, as Benetton (with which Michael Schumacher won the first two of his seven world championships) and as Renault – with which Alonso won his 2005 and ’06 titles.

Benetton long ago quit the sport and Renault has scaled back its investment in the team since the global financial crisis, hiving the major ownership off to investment firm Genii Capital although the car-maker continues to supply the engines.

And while the team represents British sports car manufacturer Lotus (which had a great F1 history in the 1960s, ’70s and even ’80s) it was somewhat ironic to hear the British national anthem played in honour of the team yesterday. It is based at Enstone in England, but there is still a strong French presence among the crew, especially the senior management led by Eric Boullier.

The Finn has won in Melbourne before, in 2007, when he went on to win Ferrari’s most recent world title. Sunday’s victory was Raikkonen’s second with Lotus since his return from two years in rallying. The first was in Abu Dhabi late last season, when the Finn known as the Iceman rebuked his then race engineer over the radio by telling him: “I know what I’m doing”.

His engineer now is Ciaron Pilbeam, son of a former F1 designer and who for the past six years had been Webber’s main man at Red Bull.

Raikkonen is notoriously a man of few words, but Lotus team technical director James Allison described Sunday’s success most eloquently.

“It was a splendid thing we saw today,” Allison said.

“It’s a day like this which make everything about this job worthwhile and that will be true for everyone involved with the team. It’s great.

"We were a little deflated after qualifying, as we knew the car had better pace than our grid positions suggested [its other driver, Frenchman Romain Grosjean qualified eighth]. Nevertheless we were confident from the long-run pace we’d seen on Friday that we could make a two-stop strategy work."

It has been a much happier start to the season than last year for Ferrari, with Brazilian Felipe Massa fourth in the race – replicating his grid position, out-qualifying teammate Alonso by a whisker.

McLaren struggled first up, although Jenson Button salvaged two points with ninth. It is a team renowned for making progress throughout a championship and this time among those it needs to overhaul is the factory team of its engine supplier, Mercedes.

Lewis Hamilton, groomed by McLaren from his karting days but who walked away after six seasons in F1 and a world title to join the previously-underperforming Mercedes, had an impressive debut with the tristar in Melbourne – third in qualifying and fifth in the race.

Red Bull certainly will be a force in races again, perhaps as early as in Malaysia next Sunday.

Webber’s Albert Park agony just gets worse
Perhaps the weight of expectation on Mark Webber in his home race is too great, but by any stretch to see his hopes evaporate so quickly again was a huge disappointment – to his army of fans at the track, on television, and undoubtedly to the man himself.

He’s won GPs overseas, finished third in world championships twice, yet in a dozen starts in the Australian GP he’s never finished better than fourth.

It was painful watching him explain Sunday’s outcome – and obviously painful for him too.

“We had a few issues on the grid, getting the telemetry from the car to the pits, which wasn’t ideal in terms of the guys knowing where to set everything up for the start,” Webber said.

“We lost KERS [kinetic energy recovery system] also for the first part of the race.

“It looked like we were quite heavy on the first set of tyres and we weren’t that quick to challenge for the win as a team today. [Then] We had a slow pit stop [due to a front jack failure], which put me behind Jenson [Button].

“We salvaged something in the end, but that was Melbourne today and it was disappointing not to get more out of it,” the Aussie stated.

Onlookers are left to wonder whether, when Vettel generally gets away so well, these persistent start-line woes of Webber are entirely mechanical or whether there is a human element in the cockpit.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner shed little more light on the picture.

“Mark made a good recovery after a difficult start and an ECU-related KERS issue in the first part of the race,” Horner said.

“We managed to reset the system and his recovery was strong from then on. We leave this race knowing we’ve got a good car and we’re looking forward to warmer temperatures in Malaysia.”

Young Australian Daniel Ricciardo’s jovial build-up to his second home race turned sour, dropping to the back of the field as he battled to get his tyres up to temperature at the start and then retiring at two-thirds distance with an exhaust problem.

A darker shadow was that the STR8 Toro Rosso looks disappointingly uncompetitive for the season in which Ricciardo needs to prove he’s worthy of promotion into Red Bull’s primary team.

Formula One drivers’ world championship after first of 19 rounds: 1 Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Lotus-Renault) 25 points; 2 Fernando Alonso (Spain, Ferrari) 18; 3 Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault) 15; 4 Felipe Massa (Brazil, Ferrari) 12; 5 Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 10; 6 Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 8; 7 Adrian Sutil (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 6; 8 Paul Di Resta (Great Britain, Force India-Mercedes) 4; 9 Jenson Button (GB, McLaren-Mercedes) 2; 10 Romain Grosjean (France, Lotus-Renault) 1.

F1 constructors’ championship : 1 Ferrari 30 points; 2 Lotus-Renault 26; 3 Red Bull-Renault 23; 4 Mercedes 10; 5 Force India-Mercedes 10; 6 McLaren-Mercedes 2.

Kiwis giantkillers in Holden-dominated V8 Supercars
Six races gone now (albeit four non-championship) in the new four-make era of V8 Supercars and Holdens have won them all. This weekend, Brad Jones Racing and Garry Rogers Motorsport have joined Triple Eight Race Engineering and Tekno Autosports as winners.

But not Holden Racing Team! The heat will be on there.

New Zealanders have won five of the six races so far, including all at Melbourne’s Albert Park. Perhaps we should have a new form of Tasman Cup!

Kiwis Fabian Coulthard, Scott McLaughlin and Shane Van Gisbergen were stars of the non-championship show at the grand prix. BJR pair Coulthard and Jason Bright dedicated their success at the GP to the late Jason Richards, another Kiwi who had such an impact at the Albury-based team.

Teenager McLaughlin won at just his sixth start with GRM and in his first full season.

Will Davison remains tops among the Ford drivers at the minute, while James Moffat scored a fifth in one of the four Nissan Altimas while the AMG Mercedes still have a lot of catching up to do.

Moffat also copped a $5000 fine ($2000 of it suspended) for shoving rookie Scott Pye in the garages.

A technical issue too over the weekend, with eight cars – those of Jamie Whincup, Craig Lowndes, van Gisbergen, Jonathon Webb, Pye, Dean Fiore, Todd Kelly and Michael Caruso – excluded from the third race for breach of an ignition timing rule.

The next round of the V8 Supercars Championship is the Tasmania 360 at Symmons Plains on April 6-7.

Grand Prix V8 Supercar Challenge overall points: 1 Fabian Coulthard (Holden Commodore VF) 289 points; 2 Jason Bright (H) 238; 3 Will Davison (Ford Falcon FG) 224; 4 David Reynolds (F) 210; 5 Scott McLaughlin (H) 205; 6 Craig Lowndes (H)  188; 7 James Moffat (Nissan Altima L33) 181; 8 Rick Kelly (N) 159; 9 Alex Davison (F) 149; 10 James Courtney ( H).

An announcement is expected on March 26, ahead of the New York Motor Show. The series is not expected to start until 2015.

Audi Sport chief Wolfgang Ullrich said at the weekend: “Our goal with the other (German) manufacturers has always been to bring a together in the USA.”

BMW Motorsport’s Jens Marquardt said: “We believe there is room for a DTM-based series in the US. The potential for a very good racing platform is there.”

The DTM already has entered into a technical tie-up with Japan’s Super GT series.

Under the US plans the way will be open for Nissan, Honda and Toyota to compete in both Japan and America.

Toyota already is represented in Japan’s Super GT by its Lexus brand.

Meanwhile, Audi finished first and second in the weekend’s Sebring 12-Hour with its R18 e-tron quottros. It was the first victory in the American classic for a hybrid car and will strengthen Audi’s favouritism for another Le Mans 24-Hour success in France in June.

Australia’s Marcos Ambrose finished 19th in his Ford Fusion in today’s fourth round of NASCAR’s Sprint Cup on the short oval at Bristol, Tennessee, but moved up a place in the championship to 15th.

Kasey Kahne won the Bristol race in a Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet SS ahead of reigning series champion Brad Keselowski in a Ford. Keslowski and Dale Earnhardt Junior now lead five-time champion Jimmie Johnson in the points.

Photo gallery from a massive weekend of racing at the 2013 Melbourne F1 Grand Prix

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