MOTORSPORT: Merc's electrifying start to new venture

As if dominating Formula 1 for six years hasn’t been enough, Mercedes is leading Formula E after its debut as a factory team at the weekend.

Porsche, the other German newcomer in the electric open-wheeler series, is sixth of the 12 teams after the first two races of FE’s sixth season at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

While Audi customer team Virgin Racing and BMW’s team run by Andretti Autosport won the races, courtesy of British drivers Sam Bird and Alex Sims respectively, Mercedes scored two podiums (third places by Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne) and Porsche’s German Andre Lotterer one (second in the opening race).

Bird leads the driver standings with 35 points from Vandoorne on 30 and Bird 26, with Lotterer equal fifth on 18.

However, Mercedes has 38 points in the teams’ championship to Virgin’s 36 and BMW-Andretti’s 35 (after its German Maximilian Guenther was stripped of his second place behind Sims), followed by Audi’s factory team on 26, Nissan 22 and Porsche 18 – equal with Venturi.

Mercedes has dabbled in FE before this season through Monaco-based Venturi – run by Toto Wolff’s ex-F1 test driver wife Susie, part-owned by actor Leonardo DiCaprio and for which one-time Supercar driver Maro Engel has raced – and HWA Racelab, whose entry the three-pointed star’s factory team has taken over.

HWA, remember, was the outfit that built the engines for Betty Klimenko’s entry to Supercars with E63s.
HWA Racelab, with Vandoorne driving, finished only ninth of the 10 teams in FE last season.

Reigning champion team DS Techeetah, a Chinese-funded outfit with French-made powertrain and run by Australian engineer Mark Preston, is only ninth after the Riyadh races.

There was a hugely embarrassing moment in the wild second race when the safety car was called in as a tractor crane removing the wrecked Virgin car of Dutchman Robert Frijins got stuck with workers still on the track.

The restart was aborted soon after the field accelerated and the circuit promptly went full-course yellow, averting the prospect of a repeat of the Jules Bianchi tragedy in the Japanese F1 Grand Prix five years ago.

“It was a communication error … it looked a little dodgy … we're not happy about it, but we’re happy with the result because nothing bad happened,” race director Scot Elkins said.

The next of the remaining 12 FE races for the quiet, “green” cars in 11 cities on five continents is at Santiago in Chile on January 18.

Business writer Christian Sylt has reported on Forbes.com that – while the FE chairman, Spaniard Alejandro Agag, has claimed it is valued at US$660 million (A$972 million) – the series had accumulated losses of US$155 million before this season.

Sylt pointed out that FE gets little in race sanction fees, despite its revenues its overall revenues growing at three times the pace of costs in recent years.

Chris Atkinson was Australia’s regular World Rally Championship competitor until Subaru’s pull-out when the global financial crisis hit more than a decade ago and now he’s copped another big blow to his subsequent career in the US as he turns 40 next Saturday.

The Americas Rallycross in which Atkinson had two round wins and finished overall runner-up this year, while Subaru won the teams’ championship, has folded.

Known as ARX and run by giant sports management company IMG, the series lasted only two seasons after being hastily cobbled together following the demise of the previous Global Rallycross Championship, which had been backed by Red Bull with almost all its races in the US.

Long-time Supercars chief Tony Cochrane had been a ‘special advisor’ to GRC.

The replacement ARX has now collapsed after IMG’s failure to land commercial partners to give it a long-term future.

“The expanding footprint of the (IMG-run) FIA World Rallycross Championship means that we may revisit the possibility of the inclusion of a North American round on the world calendar in the future,” IMG said.

However, from the Atkinson perspective, Subaru has never been a player in World RX, although it says it remains “committed to the sport of rallycross” in the US, where the sport has featured Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust and Scott Speed.

An option for Atkinson may be a possible expansion of Pastrana’s Nitro Circus next year.

Subaru told Autoweek.com: “We see an appetite for rallycross in America that hasn’t been fully tapped. It’s an incredibly exciting sport with a ton of potential, and this is a chance for the right people to get involved and create something new. Even with ARX folding, we feel good about the sport’s future overall and we expect to be competing in rallycross in 2020.”

Gravel traps at Bathurst last month were nothing compared to where IndyCar racer Alex Rossi ended up on the Baja 1000, the famed Mexican off-road race on the Baja California Peninsula.

American Rossi was leading his class in a Honda Ridgeline truck when he had an epic rollover.

“A 90-degree left over crest wasn’t as straight as anticipated at speed and sent the Ridgeline rolling on to its side, then end over end with a landing on the roof in an inconvenient ravine,” reports Melissa Eickhoff at Racer.com.

Eickhoff says spectators righted the Ridgeline, pulled it out, and Rossi – winner of the 100th Indianapolis 500 in 2016 as a rookie in that classic – and team owner-driver Jeff Proctor got back in the hunt.