MOTORSPORT: Mercedes warning to F1 rivals

The news is ominous for those wanting to see rival power unit manufacturers close the gap to Mercedes-Benz under the new rules for the Formula 1 season now only a month away.

In rolling out its W08 model the three-pointed star’s F1 engine boss Andy Cowell said it could run its updated V6 hybrid harder for longer than in the past three seasons in which it has won hat-tricks of constructor and driver world titles.

Cowell said that, with the abolition of the ‘token’ system that limited development in the first three years of the hybrids, Mercedes had made “improvements in every single area” of its power unit.

“It is a big evolution,” he said as triple world champion Lewis Hamilton did the first laps in the W08 EQ Power+ for filming purposes.

“The base architecture of our ERS (energy recovery system) system is similar to what we started with in 2014, but there improvement in the high power switches – they are more efficient.

“There are several improvements in reliability within the box, which means we can run it harder for longer.

“We are not as vulnerable to having to ‘derate’ the system for cooling reasons because of heating effects within the module.

“The MGU-H (motor generator unit – heat) is completely new as a consequence of the drive cycle change and the MGU-K (motor generator unit – kinetic) is new as well.

“There are about six design changes within the (internal combustion) engine to improve the bearing system and three or four quality improvements in the way the power unit is assembled and then looked after through its life.”

Hamilton’s teammate in the season starting at Melbourne’s Australian Grand Prix on March 24-26 will be Finn Valtteri Bottas, poached from the Williams team after Nico Rosberg’s sudden retirement within days of winning last year’s world title with Mercedes.

Renault, powering the Red Bull and Toro Rosso teams as well its own factory team, and Honda, still supplying only McLaren in its third year, also have made major changes to their power units.

Ferrari will have too, but it has been surprisingly quiet over the off-season, with Fiat and Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne not daring to repeat his bold statements last year about winning races.

Ferrari will unveil its new car tonight, Australian time, while Red Bull and Toro Rosso, owned by the same energy drink company, will launch theirs tomorrow, before the first of two four-day tests in Barcelona begins on Monday.

The Mercedes is the most conservative of the cars already seen – those of Williams, Sauber, Renault and Force India. It lacks the ‘shark fin’ between the roll bar and rear wing seen on the others, but during Hamilton’s brief outing a small T-wing was fitted in front of the rear wing.

All the cars are likely to change considerably by the time the lights go out to start the Melbourne race.

Renault’s F1 chief Cyril Abiteboul has said it wants its power unit – which Australian driver and new carsales.com.au/motoring.com.au global ambassador Daniel Ricciardo will have behind him in a Red Bull RB13 – to make up 0.3 seconds a lap on Mercedes during the Barcelona tests and about the same during the season.

"We started from scratch completely (with this year’s power unit), which is quite brave because we had a good product last year (winning two GPs with Red Bull, including Ricciardo’s Malaysian victory)," Abiteboul said.

"I think we were the best in terms of reliability, but in F1 if you don't attack you're dead.

"We saw that if we want to be serious about our ambition to catch up and overtake the best in class, which is Mercedes, we had to envisage a completely different philosophy, which is what we have done.

"So the first thing to get right is reliability – that's what will have to come first.

“In terms of performance gain we are targeting 0.3 seconds between how we start the season and how we finished last season – I am just talking about engine to engine, nothing related to the rest of the car – and we hope to make more or less an equivalent step over the course of the season."

"We think between 0.3 seconds and 0.4 seconds … but all of that will only be possible if we have the reliability.

“If you don't have the reliability then it really ‘screws’ your engine introduction plan and what you were supposed to bring for engine [upgrades] No.2 or engine No.3 will not be available because you have to fix your engine issues."

Abiteboul said that under this year’s rules, which apart from freeing up engine development are bringing back wider tyres and more aerodynamic downforce, “this season will really be an arms race” among the top teams.

“It’s a big unknown for us what Honda will have done in terms of engine development,” he said.

The Honda-powered McLarens have been hopelessly uncompetitive in the first two seasons of those two companies reuniting, but pride alone will have driven them to chase major improvement for this year.

“McLaren is capable of producing a very decent car,” Abiteboul said.
While many technical experts doubt the new rules will improve the quality of the racing, at least some of Red Bull’s top engineers believe the aerodynamic regulations could lead to more overtaking.

“The more downforce cars produce the more they can be affected by other cars in terms of their drag,” Red Bull’s head of aerodynamics Dan Fallows said.

“So it could be that cars are able to run closer behind another car to use the slipstream down the straight, so overtaking in that sense could be easier.”
However, Patrick Head – former technical chief at Williams and creator of many title-winning cars – has said: “Anyone who thinks increasing downforce will improve the racing has got rocks in their head.”

Suspensions and FIA’s windfall profit hot topics
The next month could produce more than the usual controversy in F1 – over suspensions and American company Liberty’s takeover of the sport, or at least one part of it.

Ferrari is concerned about the Mercedes and Red Bull ‘pre-loaded’ systems said to “mimic” active suspension, which has been outlawed in F1 for more than 20 years.

The governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has given its blessing so far to the Mercedes and Red Bull systems, but speculation is mounting of an official Ferrari protest in Melbourne.

Suspensions are not supposed to move to gain aerodynamic benefit, but it is a cloudy technical area and there appears to be almost consensus that active suspensions be allowed again next year to remove the uncertainty. But that doesn’t solve the problem, or at least question, of what’s to be allowed this year.

While Liberty’s takeover valuing the F1 business at US$8 billion (almost $A10.4 billion) appears to be progressing towards conclusion by its March 31 deadline, there could yet be an investigation into the FIA’s sale of its one per cent stake to Liberty.

The FIA was given its shares in F1’s commercial rights holding company Delta Topco in 2013 for less than $US460,000 but stands to get $US80 million for selling to Liberty.

There are questions about whether, as the organisation that had to approve the transfer of the commercial rights, it is a conflict of interest that the FIA profit in this way.

The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly for its competitions commissioner to investigate the matter, but the commissioner is not obliged to do so and may decide there are other, higher priorities.

There also could be scrutiny of what effectively is F1’s prizemoney structure that heavily compensates the top teams while others get so much less and are either driven out of the sport, as Manor recently was, or to the brink of it as Sauber, in particular, and Force India have been in the past 12-18 months.

It’s official – Joey jumps up into F3
Joey Mawson, perhaps the best prospect to be Australia’s next F1 driver, has confirmed this week that he will contest this year’s European Formula 3 Championship with Dutch team Van Amersfoort Racing.

The news came hot on the heels of Mawson, 20, of Sydney, narrowly losing the MRF Challenge in the Middle East and India on a countback after having won last year’s German Formula 4 Championship with Van Amersfoort.

Meanwhile, a six-round Australian F3 ‘Premier’ series calendar has been announced after the collapse before it started of Formula A proposed by the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport along the lines of the old Formula Libre and which had envisaged the F3 cars as the core of its field.

CAMS had planned to run Formula A at rounds of the Shannons Nationals, but F3 Management has gone its own way with rounds at Victoria’s Winton in mid-April, Queensland’s Morgan Park in May, SA’s Mallala in June, Sydney Motorsport Park on the first week of July, Queensland Raceway in mid-September and NSW’s Wakefield Park on the third weekend of October.

F3 says it will allow other open-wheelers with engines up to 2-litre to participate, as had been intended with Formula A. F3 said there had been provision for eight years for other classes to join it but that there has not been any interest in previous seasons.

Former Shannons Nationals promoters Rob Curkpatrick and his son Liam who were to have run Formula A are now concentrating on evolving the Sports Racer Series into the Australian Prototype Series with five rounds and three classes of car.

All set for ‘The Great American Race’
Chase Elliott in a Chevrolet and Denny Hamlin in a Toyota won today’s two 150-mile (240km) duels at Daytona in Florida that set the field for NASCAR’s Daytona 500 early Monday, Australian time.

Elliott, the 21-year-old son of 1988 NASCAR Cup champion Bill Elliott, had already secured pole position last weekend for the race, the biggest in American motorsport having long overtaken the Indianapolis 500 open-wheeler event.

Hamlin took the lead with a lap to go in the second ‘duel’, charging past Dale Earnhardt Junior who is returning after missing the second half of last season after concussion and faded to sixth at the chequered flag.

However, Earnhardt – a Chevrolet teammate of Elliott at Hendrick Motorsports – will start the 500 alongside the youngster on the front row, with Hamlin in third spot.

Hamlin, who drives for Joe Gibbs Racing, is the defending winner of ‘The Great American Race’ while it is the second year that Elliott has been on the pole, although last year his race lasted less than 20 laps.

Championship points were awarded to the first 10 finishers in the ‘duels’ this year, and points will be awarded to the top 10 at each of the first two of three segments of the 36 rounds of what is now the Monster Energy Cup.