MOTORSPORT: Mercedes hits form, Ricciardo podium hat-trick

Mercedes is back into its stride in Formula 1 with its first one-two finish of the season, while Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo has notched his third podium in a row.

The manufacturer with the three-pointed star emblem has taken the lead in the constructors’ world championship, eight points ahead of Ferrari – which missed the podium in Canada for the first time this season.

However, Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari) still leads Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) by 12 points in the drivers’ championship, having salvaged a brilliant fourth place in Montreal after sitting in 18th early in the race.

Vettel had to make a premature stop to replace his car’s nose after Red Bull’s Max Verstappen damaged its front wing in his lightning start into second place, a charge that was cut short 10 laps later by an electrical failure.

Carsales.com.au ambassador Ricciardo followed up his third places in Spain and Monaco with another in Montreal – a little more than 35 seconds behind Hamilton at the chequered flag, and 15.5 seconds behind the second Mercedes driven by Valtteri Bottas.

"I couldn’t rest the whole race ... but happy with that," Ricciardo said.

"Obviously, we [Renault-powered Red Bull Racing] are not the quickest car on the track at the moment, but we’re managing to put it together on a Sunday. Yeah, it’s nice."

Australia also had a couple of winners overseas at the weekend – Will Power in the spectacular IndyCar round at the Texas Motor Speedway and fellow Queenslander Matt Campbell in a race in Germany’s Porsche Carrera Cup held at Austria’s Red Bull Ring in Spielberg.

Just days after returning to Europe from testing a Holden Commodore Supercar with Triple Eight Race Engineering at Queensland Raceway for the September-October endurance races, Campbell finished third in a second Carrera Cup race at Spielberg. Both races had a field of 31 and it was a great hit-out for Campbell ahead of next month’s round there in the Porsche Supercup, the Warwick driver’s main mission this year.

On home soil, Supercar star Chaz Mostert and his great mate Nathan Morcom won the Australian Production Car Series round at Victoria’s Winton circuit, taking out Sunday’s 300km race in a Ford Focus RS.

The previous day the pair had been runners-up to reigning Formula 4 and Toyota 86 champion Will Brown and veteran Rod Salmon in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X after a late puncture on the Ford.

West Australian youngster Jordan Love swept the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge round at Winton.
Fifth winner of the year in WRC
The World Rally Championship has a fifth winner in seven rounds this season – Ott Tanak, the 29-year-old Estonian teammate of four-time world champion Sebastien Ogier.

Despite the cockpit of his Ford Fiesta filling with dust in the sandy conditions on the opening stage of the final day of Rally Italy on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, impairing his vision and causing him to overshoot a junction and slither into bushes, Tanak registered his first win in 73 WRC starts.

He finished 12.3 seconds ahead of the Toyota Yaris of Finn Jari-Matti Latvala, with the Hyundai i20 Coupe of Belgian Thierry Neuville a minute away in third.

Tanak is now third in the championship, with the lead of Frenchman Ogier – only fifth on Sardinia – narrowed to 18 points over Neuville.

However, the privateer Ford outfit M-Sport has stretched its lead in the teams’ championship to 40 points over Hyundai, which has won the most stages for the season – 48.

All three Hyundai drivers won stages on Sardinia – New Zealander Hayden Paddon two of them, and he was an early leader before two crashes put him out – while Toyota had three cars finish in the top six.

Fourth in a Yaris was Esapekka Lappi, a Finn in only his second start in a world rally car and the winner of six of the 19 stages.

Norwegian Andreas Mikkelsen, winner of four-time champion manufacturer VW’s last start at Rally Australia back in November, was eighth in Sardinia in his first drive of a Citroen C3 – and best of the French company’s four drivers.

Citroen has "benched" Northern Irishman Kris Meeke for Rally Poland in three weeks to keep Mikkelsen on. The latter won in Poland last year.

Paddon admitted that the first of his crashes on Sardinia had been "a schoolboy error" in clipping a bank and breaking a rear wheel.

Rejoining the rally on the final day Paddon and new British co-driver Seb Marshall won the leg’s first stage before another, similar crash.

"We had another very strange incident on a ‘nothing’ corner, where like yesterday I clipped the inside, which sent us wide. I don’t know why this is happening," Paddon said.

"I am incredibly disappointed in myself and for the team. I want to learn from this, but at the same time put it behind us and look ahead to Poland."

World Rally Championship driver standings after seven of 13 rounds – 1. Sebastien Ogier (France, M-Sport Ford) 141 points; 2. Thierry Neuville (Belgium, Hyundai) 123; 3. Ott Tanak (Estonia, M-Sport Ford) 108; 4. Jari-Matti Latvala (Finland, Toyota) 107; 5. Daniel Sordo (Spain, Hyundai) 70; 6. Elfyn Evans (Great Britain, M-Sport Ford) 53; 7. Craig Breen (Ireland, Citroen) 43; 8. Hayden Paddon (New Zealand, Hyundai) 33; 9. Juho Haenninen (Finland, Toyota Gazoo Racing) 29; 10. Kris Meeke (GB, Citroen) 27; 11. Esapekka Lappi (Finland, Toyota) 20; 12. Andreas Mikkelsen (Norway, Skoda/Citroen) 16.

WRC team standings – 1. M-Sport Ford 234 points; 2. Hyundai Motorsport 194; 3. Toyota 143; 4. Citroen 97.
VW now rules in rallycross
Volkswagen may be out of the WRC after four years of domination, but it’s tops in rallycross – the short-form combination of rallying and circuit racing – in both the world championship and North America’s "global" championship.

Scott Speed and Tanner Foust in a pair of Andretti-prepared Beetles head the American series that resumes in Memphis, Tennessee, on Saturday, while Swede Johan Kristoffersson has just won in the World RX for the second time this season in a Polo GTI to stretch his lead over Audi’s reigning champion, his countryman Mattias Ekstrom.

That was despite Kristoffersson having an extremely painful right foot after it was caught under Sebastien Loeb Peugeot 208 at the start of the weekend’s round at Hell in Norway.

"Sebastien’s car needed to be reversed to get my foot back out, which was really painful but nobody’s fault, just one of those things that happened," Kristoffersson said.

"There wasn’t much time between the semi-final and final and that is when it was really bad, but painkillers helped and I will go to the hospital tomorrow morning to get it properly looked at."

Norwegian Andreas Bakkerud was runner-up at his home round in one of American Ken Block’s Hoonigan Racing Fords, with Loeb third.

Petter Solberg, the Norwegian who won the first two World RX titles before Ekstrom’s success last year, missed the final at Hell, but remains third in the championship in his VW – 17 points behind teammate Kristoffersson (151) and nine behind Ekstrom.

The Solberg VW outfit heads the teams' championship on 285 points – 81 points clear of the Peugeot Hansen team for which Loeb races.

The next round is at Holjes in Sweden on July 1-2.

Winners at the third round of the first Rallycross Australia Series – at the Carnell Raceway at Stanthorpe, Queensland – were Justin Dowel in a Hyundai i20 in the all-wheel-drive class, ahead of Will Orders in a Mitsubishi Evo, and Arron Windus (Mazda 2) in the two-wheel-drive class after a day-long battle with Mike Conway (Ford Escort).

The fourth round of that series is back at Murulan in NSW on July 29.
Power the great survivor in Texas
The victory in Texas for Toowoomba’s Will Power was his 31st in IndyCar and he’s now equal ninth on the list of all-time winners in that series with Scotsman Dario Franchitti and Canadian Paul Tracy, both retired.

Power survived a wild night on the 1.5-mile (2.4km) high-banked oval in Fort Worth, leading 180 of the 248 laps in the race. Of the 248 laps, 66 were under caution.

The biggest incident was a nine-car pile-up that eliminated six cars. The mayhem began when Brazilian Tony Kanaan touched James Hinchcliffe entering turn three.

Kanaan was given a 20-second penalty and found himself two laps down, but – aided by subsequent cautions – recovered to finish second in his Honda-powered Chip Ganassi Racing entry to the Penske-Chevrolet driven by Power, with reigning champion Frenchman Simon Pagenaud – also driving a Penske-Chevrolet – in third.

Power snuck by New Zealander Scott Dixon in another Ganassi car five laps from the chequered flag and then on the next lap Japan’s Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato spun heading into turn one and collected Dixon and two other cars.

Just nine of the 22 starters were still running when the chequered flag dropped, with Power cruising to his second victory of the season.

Dixon was classified ninth and kept the series lead after nine of 17 races with 326 points. Pagenaud is second with 313, Sato (Andretti Autosports, Honda) third with 312, Brazilian Helio Castroneves (Penske-Chevrolet) fourth with 303 and Power, after a dreadful start to the season, is now fifth on 286.

The next race is at Road America on June 25.
Montreal a huge success for Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton’s F1 triumph in Montreal was his third straight in the Canadian GP and the sixth in total, after the first of his career there a decade ago.

While he now has 56 wins, second only to Michael Schumacher’s 91, even more important to Hamilton at the weekend was equalling the 65 pole positions of his idol Ayrton Senna.

The Brazilian legend’s family presented one of his helmets to Hamilton in recognition of the achievement.

While the race was a ‘walk in the park’ for Hamilton, and he delighted in the special adulation that the Montreal fans have for him, he said this season was still "very difficult with the car we have at the moment", although he praised the Mercedes team for its work since the problems they had in Monaco.

And, pointedly, Hamilton indicated that he preferred working with new teammate Valterri Bottas than departed reigning world champion Nico Rosberg.

"I think the working environment we’ve both experienced this year is on a complete other level, on a professional level that’s been above any other year that I have experienced," Hamilton said.

Montreal was an excellent race for Mercedes-powered Force India, with Mexican Sergio Perez and Frenchman Esteban Ocon fifth and sixth – pressuring Australian Daniel Ricciardo most of the race and only overtaken by Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in the closing stages.

There was some angst between the Force India pair though, with Ocon feeling he would have had a better chance of overtaking Ricciardo had Perez let him through.

Perez resisted that, saying that time that may have been lost in trading places – and perhaps reversing them later if Ocon had not been able to get the job done – could have enabled Vettel to catch them sooner.

While it was the first GP this year in which Vettel had not finished either first or second, it was another miserable day in the end for Ferrari’s other driver, Kimi Raikkonen, who had brake troubles just as Vettel caught him in his fightback from 18th.

Even more miserable though was Fernando Alonso after a promising start and looking good early for McLaren-Honda’s first world championship point(s) of the season.

The Honda power unit failed again a couple of laps from the finish as signs intensified that McLaren is close to severing ties with the Japanese company after three woeful seasons and revert to Mercedes power – albeit as a customer team this time – from next year.

Ninth place in his home race brought the first points for Williams-Mercedes rookie Lance Stroll, who at 18 became the youngest driver other than Max Verstappen to score points in F1.

Ricciardo smiling after his day of defence
Daniel Ricciardo said Montreal, where he scored the first of his four GP victories with Red Bull three years ago, had been "tough" this time – "a race of defence".

"It was tricky with the level of grip the [soft compound] tyre had, but also with the wind," Ricciardo said.

"The wind was throwing the car around quite a lot and that was tricky. And then a few laps to go I heard Seb [Vettel] was coming, so yeah, I couldn’t rest the whole race.

"Today I don’t think I had fun till I saw the chequered flag!

"It was tough. I was defending the whole race, and we weren’t that quick, to be honest.

"I had pressure, so I couldn’t afford to do any mistakes, and it was getting quite hot, so concentration was being tested, but it was a lot of fun.

"I enjoyed it and it is awesome to be on the podium here."

And, with that Ricciardo did one of his famous "shoeys", and enticed podium interviewer, actor Sir Patrick Stewart, to drink one too – much to everyone’s enjoyment.

Formula 1 World Championship driver standings after seven of 20 rounds –
1. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Ferrari) 141; 2. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 129; 3. Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Mercedes) 93; 4. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 73; 5. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 67; 6. Max Verstappen (Netherlands, Red Bull-Renault) 45; 7. Sergio Perez (Mexico, Force India-Mercedes) 44; 8. Esteban Ocon (France, Force India-Mercedes) 27; 9. Carlos Sainz Junior (Spain, Toro Rosso-Renault) 25; 10. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 20; 11. Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Renault) 18; 12. Romain Grosjean (France, Haas-Ferrari) 10; 13. Kevin Magnussen (Denmark, Haas-Ferrari) 5; 14. Pascal Wehrlein (Germany, Sauber-Ferrari) 4; 15. Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Toro Rosso-Renault) 4; 16. Lance Stroll (Canada, Williams-Mercedes) 2.

F1 constructor standings – 1. Mercedes 222 points; 2. Ferrari 214; 3. Red Bull-Renault 112; 4. Force India-Mercedes 71; 5. Toro Rosso-Renault 29; 6. Williams-Mercedes 22; 7. Renault 18; 8. Haas-Ferrari 15; 9. Sauber-Ferrari 4.