MOTORSPORT: Mercedes arrows in on electric racing

Mercedes, the dominant manufacturer in Formula 1 for six years, launched its factory Formula E team this week as the electric open-wheeler series organiser claimed it’s becoming “the sport of choice for young fans”.

The motor in the Mercedes-Benz EQ was developed at the company’s F1 race engine shop at Brixworth in Britain.

“The experts who have developed our Formula E powertrain have already accumulated a great deal of experience with F1 hybrid power units,” said Merc FE team principal Ian James.

“This knowledge transfer is helping us immensely, but Formula E is a completely different challenge.”

FE – which begins its sixth season in November (still without an Australian round) and will have another German manufacturer, Porsche, as its other new entrant – uses a single-make chassis and standard aerodynamics and battery design.

The scope for manufacturer development is on the inverter, motor, transmission, rear axle and software for energy management.

Mercedes has already been quietly involved in FE under the banner of HWA Racelab and its factory team will continue to be managed by HWA, which takes its initials from Hans-Werner Aufrecht who founded AMG.

HWA ran the Mercs in the German touring car series, the DTM, until the tristar pulled out at the end of last season, and famously built the engines for Betty Klimenko's E63s when she entered Supercar racing.

Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne, an ex-McLaren F1 driver, and Nyck de Vries, a 24-year-old Dutchman poised to win this year's Formula 2 championship, will be the Mercedes FE drivers.

Mercedes Motorsport boss Toto Wolff says that F1 continues to make “a lot of sense” for the manufacturer in the short to medium term, but that “in 10 years the whole auto industry might be different and fully electric and in a different place”.

FE founder and chairman, Spaniard Alejandro Agag, boasted this week that his organisation would announce its first profit soon after revenues for the 2018-19 season of more than 200 million Euros (A$322 million), with sponsorship accounting for about half that.

Agag told London’s Financial Times that sponsors “keep coming” and “renewing for longer and longer” as they perceive the series to be “definitely a bet for the future”.

“Reaching break-even is a historic moment for us. For a business that almost didn’t make it after three races, now after 60 races we reach break-even – and with strong revenue growth – and that is going to continue,” he said.

FE claims that almost three-quarters of its followers on social channels are under the age of 35 and that 42 per cent of videos are being viewed by fans under 25.

Even before buying control of F1 three years ago, American conglomerate Liberty Media acquired a slice of FE to keep it afloat through its early cash-flow difficulties.

Mark Webber has said that he was “really against electric” until he drove the Porsche 919 Hybrid in which he ultimately won a world endurance championship in 2015.

“Yes, the acoustics are terrible, but the torque and power are just incredible,” Webber said when interviewed by autox.com recently at The Quail, A Motorsport Gathering on California’s Monterey Peninsula.

Webber also rated Lewis Hamilton a better F1 driver than Michael Schumacher, who this week was reported to have had a third stem cell infusion at a Paris hospital almost six years after the skiing accident that has kept him from public view.

“He [Hamilton] is going to beat Michael’s win record [he has 81 grand prix victories to Schumi’s 91],” Webber said.

“He has already beaten the pole record [87 to Schumi’s 68].

“He’s going to beat the podium record [he has 146 to Schumi’s 155].

“He’s better than Michael anyway – he’s better than Michael was!

“Is he better than [Alain] Prost? – because Prost was better than Michael.

“Prost was the best. Michael was amazing, but Lewis ... it's very controversial when I say this, people are like, ‘it’s an insult to Michael because he’s not in great shape right now’.

“But the facts are that Lewis never goes off the road. He was last in the stewards’ office in 2013. Michael was in the stewards’ office every third race. Lewis is so good that he’s able to keep a margin.”

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation is to come under new direction, with prominent Melbourne businessman and former Supercars team owner Paul Little becoming chairman.

John Harnden will step aside from the chairmanship of the AGPC, of which he earlier had been chief executive under Ron Walker, to become chief executive of the Melbourne and Olympic Parks Trust.

Victoria’s Labor government, which had wanted to install Little at the AGPC when Walker’s health deteriorated and he gave up the chairmanship after 20 years, now has its man in there after having chaired the Visit Victoria tourism agency in recent years.

Little built logistics company Toll Holdings into a monolith, owned Toll Racing and then sponsored the Toll HSV Dealer Team in Supercars, and also went to the rescue of the Essendon Football Club amid its supplements scandal several years ago.

Little said the annual F1 season-opening grand prix in Melbourne and the MotoGP at Phillip Island were “the best motor racing events in the world” and he looked forward to “helping shape” them, which presumably includes reducing the annual combined losses of about $60 million of taxpayer funds.

The World Rally Championship for drivers, which mid-year looked like coming down to the wire at Rally Australia at Coffs Harbour in mid-November, could be pretty much decided this weekend.

Toyota’s Estonian star Ott Tanak has won four of the past five rounds and has gone into Rally Turkey 33 points clear of Hyundai’s Belgian Thierry Neuville and Citroen’s Frenchman Sebastien Ogier, the world champion of the past six years (four times with Volkswagen and the past two with M-Sport Ford).

After Turkey only the British round in Wales on October 3-6 and Rally Spain in Catalunya on October 25-27 remain before Rally Oz on November 14-17.

And still there is no official announcement of the 2020 WRC calendar, originally due in June and from which the Australian round is expected to be dropped in favour of a return to New Zealand for the first time since 2012.

Despite Tanak’s recent dominance, Hyundai leads the manufacturer points table with 289 to Toyota's 281, with Citroen a distant third and M-Sport Ford back in fourth this year.

While iconic team owner Roger Penske has Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden on course for Supercar and IndyCar crowns this season, all three of his NASCAR drivers are in contention for the title in America’s biggest series with the ‘playoffs’ starting in Las Vegas this weekend.

Penske’s reigning champion Joey Logano, 2012 champ Brad Keselowski and second-year driver Ryan Blaney are among the seven Ford Mustang drivers in the 10-round playoffs.

There are five Chevrolet drivers and four in Toyotas in with a chance.

Despite Toyota having the smallest representation, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin – both four-time race winners this year in Joe Gibbs Camrys – are the favourites.

Chevrolet’s seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson is not among the 16 contenders after the first 26 rounds of the Cup for the first time the introduction of ‘The Chase’ for the title was introduced in 2004.

The five Chevy drivers in contention are all seeded seventh or lower.

“Chevrolet has collectively looked lost and far behind the two other manufacturers since rolling out its Camaro last season,” Autoweek’s Matt Weaver commented this week.