MOTORSPORT: Mercedes' F1 glitch, but still miles ahead

The only thing likely to defeat Mercedes-Benz in Formula 1 this year, certainly early, will be itself – and, with the dawn of the new season just two weeks away in Melbourne, that happened last night.

While Mercedes has been the standout team in pre-season testing in Barcelona, its six-time world champion driver Lewis Hamilton stopped out on the Catalunya circuit last night after only a few laps and did not get back out on the track.

Smoke streamed from inside the front left wheel of Hamilton's W11 car and Mercedes said there had been "an oil-pressure anomaly, which made the engine shut down as a precautionary measure".

Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel ended up topping the day's timesheet, but his best lap of 1 minute 16.841 seconds was still slower than the fastest lap in the five days of testing so far – 1:15.732 by Hamilton's teammate, and last year's Australian Grand Prix winner, Valtteri Bottas.

That's 7.5 seconds faster than when Nico Rosberg topped testing for Mercedes in Barcelona five years ago!

Tonight's session will be the last before the new cars and teams depart for Melbourne, where the season-opening GP will be held on March 13-15.

Mercedes has dominated the six seasons of the V6 hybrid era and, despite Vettel winning for Ferrari in Melbourne in 2017 and '18, has won four of the past six AGPs.

Australia's Daniel Ricciardo has been only 11th fastest in both days of Barcelona testing this week in Renault's RS20 car. Last night the carsales.com.au global ambassador was almost 0.4 seconds slower than his new teammate, Frenchman Esteban Ocon, and more than 1.5 seconds slower than Vettel – and thus 2.5 seconds off the best by Mercedes this pre-season.

Ricciardo's debut race with Renault in Melbourne last year was as good as over within seconds as he veered off course at the start, his car requiring a new nose and front wing before he retired mid-race with any hope of world championship points gone. Winner of seven GPs with his former team Red Bull Racing and third in the championship in 2014 and '16, he's looking to improve on his ninth place last season to make continuing with the French manufacturer for a third year worthwhile.

"I want this [being at Renault] to work," Ricciardo said this week when asked whether he would entertain a call from Ferrari if it does not retain Vettel after his contract expires this year.

"I really want to make this happen and make it work, and obviously the step to that is getting more out of this year than we did last year [when Renault slipped a place in the constructors' championship to fifth, behind Mercedes, Ferrari, Honda-powered Red Bull and Renault-powered McLaren].

"Hopefully getting enough out of it that the journey continues beyond my two-year contract. That's the ideal scenario.

"To talk about other what-ifs and the future ... it's still too early."

A worry for Renault in trying to climb back up the constructor standings is the testing form of Racing Point's Mercedes-powered RP20 car, which Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll's team admits is a copy of last year's W10 Mercedes.

Renault F1's executive director Marcin Budkowski has said that Racing Point's design approach is "a slightly concerning evolution for the sport".

"It's a trend that started a few seasons ago and it is a new chapter in that trend. It will be for the FIA [Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, the world governing body of motorsport] to decide whether it's fully compliant or not," Budkowski said.

Come Melbourne the F1 community may find Renault officially challenging the legality of the Racing Point car and Mercedes' dual-axis steering (DAS), which enables Hamilton and Bottas to change the camber of their front tyres in corners and on straights.

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto concedes that the Italian squad won't be as quick as Mercedes in Melbourne. While Ferrari's SF1000 has more downforce than last year's SF90, Binotto admits it has a weakness in slow-speed corners.

Testing is not always a true indicator of form because of teams using different tyre compounds, engine modes and fuel loads.

In the testing Wednesday night, Australian time, Alfa Romeo test driver Robert Kubica topped the timesheet.

However, Red Bull looms as the main rival to Mercedes early in the season, although Max Verstappen has had three times as many spins in testing as any other driver – six over the five days, including two last night. Initially Verstappen said the spins were just the result of exploring the RB16's limits, but last night he admitted to an error in one case and blamed windy conditions for the other.

Vettel also spun his Ferrari at one of the corners where Verstappen messed up.

The BBC's chief F1 writer, Andrew Benson, reported from the Barcelona paddock that questions were being asked about whether the Adrian Newey-designed RB16 is suffering from an instability on corner entry.

Benson noted that Red Bull introduced a major bodywork upgrade last night, with a new front wing, under-nose 'cape', aerodynamic deflectors behind the front wheels and rear diffuser.

Verstappen, an eight-time GP winner and still only 22, said he was unsure where Red Bull stood in the pecking order of constructors. "We just focus on ourselves [in testing] and then we will find out in Melbourne where we are," he said.

Frenchman Romain Grosjean, a veteran of 164 GPs and 10 podiums but without a victory and entering his fifth season with American team Haas, said this week F1 was a "show" rather than a sport.

"A sport is supposed to be fair and F1 is not fair [because of the inequality of the cars caused by differing team budgets]," Grosjean said.

"It's like asking Roger Federer to go with a ping-pong racket to Roland Garros [the French tennis open] – he won't have a chance.

"Would you call tennis a sport if they were not coming all with the same rackets, or if the court was wider on one side than it would be on the other side?

"Look at Daniel Ricciardo. If you only take his time at Renault, he hasn't even scored a podium.

"But he's been winning races [with Red Bull]. He's a great driver.

"It all depends what you've got between your hands."

The Bathurst 6-Hour at Easter is set to be the biggest race in Mt Panorama history in terms of entries, with four Ford Mustangs trying to break BMW's stranglehold on the production car enduro.

The field could hit the maximum 72-car grid capacity by the deadline for entries on Friday week, March 6.

There are already 68 entries and new organiser Australian Racing Group's Ken Collier, the former long-time GT racing administrator, says: "there are more competitors we are talking to who have indicated plans to compete, which means the final four spots could fill up very quickly".

The record field at Mt Panorama was 64 cars for the 2017 6-Hour. In the past, the Bathurst 1000 touring car race has had 63 entries three times, long before the limit of about half that number that has come with the Supercars era.

This year's field of 68 entries so far represent 14 manufacturers and 30 models.

The Mustang is eligible for the 6-Hour for the first time. Ryan McLeod Racing Cars is behind the development of the Mustang for the event and has entered one, while colourful touring car identity Andrew Miedecke and Garth Walden Racing are 'Stang entrants too. Coleby Cowham is driving a fourth Mustang.

BMWs have won the 6-Hour every year since its inception in 2016 and there are 17 Bimmers on the entry list this year for the April 12 race.

Defending champion Beric Lynton from the Gold Coast has expanded his team to two M3s while Sherrin Racing, another former winner from Queensland, is there again too.

There are rafts of Holdens, Mitsubishis and Subarus on the entry list.

Among the drivers in the 6-Hour will be legend John Bowe and new Supercars star Anton De Pasquale, although the full line-up won't be known until after entries close.

The Easter meeting also includes the debut of the Carsales TCR 2.0-litre touring car series at Mt Panorama, as well as GTs, historic touring cars and the Radical sports car and Hyundai Excel cups.