Motorsport: New Ferrari makes it on time

Monday motorsport reportJanuary 15, 2007

The latest red rocket from Maranello
Ferrari unveiled its 2007 Formula One car last night, contrary to expectations that it would not be ready in time.

The F2007 car has a new-look front suspension, is aerodynamically sharper, and will have a different rear suspension by the time the season starts in Melbourne in mid-March. The car is about 10kg heavier than its predecessor, has a longer wheelbase and is fitted with an innovative quick-shift system.

Team boss Jean Todt says that, most importantly, F1's most famous team has to regain the reliability it had from the start of the 21st century up until 2004 if it is to recapture its mantle at the top of the sport in the wake of seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher's retirement.

The title fight went down to the wire in 2006, after Schumacher's rare engine failure in the penultimate round in Japan, and Todt says: "Last year we were competitive but not reliable enough. So we absolutely have to get back to the levels of the years 2000 to 2004 when we were victorious. As far as the competitiveness (of the new car) is concerned we can see an improvement at all levels in the simulations. (Now) We have to confirm that on the race track, because what counts in the end is the stopwatch."

Ferrari's Brazilian driver, Felipe Massa, will give the F2007 its track debut tonight, Australian time, at the team's private test circuit, Fiorano, in Maranello. Ferrari claims its new front suspension is a major conceptual innovation, mainly in its aerodynamics.

The car's sidepods and their openings have also been revised, based on changes to the cooling system, while the engine air intake is substantially different too. The rear suspension is from last year's model that won four of the last five races, but Ferrari says it is planning "a significant development program" in that area by Melbourne.

Revered technical director Ross Brawn is on a year's "sabbatical" leave, but the head of Ferrari's chassis department, Aldo Costa, says of the new car: "The aerodynamics have been completely remodeled -- above all the front suspension, the air inlets on the main body and the rear axle are tighter and more tapered, to benefit also from the new architecture of the gearbox.

"The suspension has been revised also under the aspect of new tyres, while the gearbox has a new quick-shift system, which will avert time loss during gearchanges. This system lowers the time of gearchange, works for all gears and in every condition. We have also modified the disposition and the inclination of the radiator. As far as the rear suspension is concerned, it is continuing to evolve.

Today's car is the one that will debut (tonight) and has the same wings as the one in 2006. The car which will go to start at the first GP will have optimised wings, while this is just a provisional version. The F2007 is however definitive in its structure."

VW half an hour ahead on Dakar
Volkswagen leads the Dakar Rally by more than half an hour after the eighth stage overnight in Mauritania. South African Giniel de Villiers won his third stage of this year's event in a VW Touareg by more than six minutes from Frenchman Stefan Peterhansel in a Mitsubishi Pajero.

Although Mitsubishi has not won a stage yet this year after dominating the Dakar so far this century, its reigning champion, Frenchman Luc Alphand, was third on the eighth stage -- the event's longest, at 589km, and probably the hardest.

De Villiers had taken the overall lead before Saturday's rest day and now leads Peterhansel by 31 minutes 13 seconds with a week -- and seven stages -- of the rally to run. Alphand is now third, 43 minutes behind De Villiers, while Spain's dual world rally champion Carlos Sainz, who had led in his VW until his South African teammate took over top spot on Friday, now looks to be out of contention after losing more than an hour last night with a power steering failure that has dropped him to fourth place, more than 65 minutes behind De Villiers.

Spain's Marc Coma still leads the motorcycle section on his KTM, now by 54 minutes, from France's Cyril Desperes, also on a KTM.

Tonight's ninth stage is still on Mauritanian soil, over 494km from Tichit to Nema.

Toyota finished sixth in last year's constructors' world championship -- with 35 points and behind Renault, Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, Honda and BMW-Sauber -- after it had been fourth in 2005, with 88 points. Ralf Schumacher's third place in Melbourne was the team's only podium in '06. Jarno Trulli's second places in Malaysia and Bahrain in 2005 remain its best results from the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars it has spent.

This year is Toyota's 50th in motorsport. The F1 season starts on March 18 in Melbourne, where Toyota made its competition debut in 1957 with a Toyopet Crown in the Australian Rally.

The Japanese manufacturer says that, in addressing its F1 reliability problems of last year, virtually no parts have been carried over from the TF106 and TF106B cars to this year's model, and it has introduced a seamless shift gearbox for the first time.

While Toyota's five-year track record in F1 is not pretty, it is taking some consolation that this season it is the only one of the 11 teams to start the season with the same two drivers (Trulli and Ralf Schumacher), the same engine and same tyre partner, Bridgestone.
"Our fundamental challenge this year is to get the first victory," Tomita says, again.

Tadashi Yamashina, seconded to the team as Toyota's motorsport vice-chairman, says: "The most important target to aim for this season is the first victory. We want to be on the top step of the podium. We have improved in all areas -- aerodynamics, suspension and gearchange."

Red Bull aiming for a high five
Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner says the team is aiming to finish in the top five in this year's constructors' world championship -- which is good news for its Aussie driving recruit Mark Webber if it comes to fruition. Red Bull was seventh in each of its first two seasons.

It is counting on a switch from Ferrari to Renault engines and its first chassis from Adrian Newey, thought by many to be the sport's most brilliant designer, to make a quantum leap.

Horner says: "Our objective is to be a top-five team this year. That obviously means beating at least two manufacturer-based teams, so we are realistic about our ambitions and we have a clear plan for this year that leads into 2008 and beyond. But all the basics are now in place and we should see continued progress throughout the year."

Red Bull will unveil its new car for Webber and veteran David Coulthard in Barcelona on January 26. Newey says of the upcoming RB3 model: "Expectations seem to be quite high, which is a shame. I would much rather sort of go in in a fairly low-key way, and if we do better than expected then that is great."

On our reckoning, Honda, Toyota, BMW and Ferrari can be excluded, leaving Renault and McLaren-Mercedes. We still wonder, though, whether Richards may buy the chassis but bring in a new manufacturer to supply the engine. Perhaps Hyundai?

Richards has foreshadowed that key appointments in his team will start to be announced within a couple of weeks, while the driver line-up could be known by mid-year. That may be influenced by any partnership relationship with an existing team, which may have a surplus driver it wants placed for '08.

India, Singapore speed up race
India could host an F1 grand prix as early as 2009, it was suggested at the weekend, while there is speculation of a new F1 street race in Singapore as soon as September 2008 -- and possibly at night. Believe all this when you see it. These things don't happen overnight, and pigs still don't fly.

Leading Indian businessman Vijay Mallya says, after his Kingfisher Airlines signed a sponsorship deal with Toyota's F1 team, that he is confident of the sport making it to the sub-continent.

Mallya is described as being a close Indian associate of F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, who said last year that he was in negotiations with a regional government in India to build a race track, without saying which one.

Mallya says: "The government of Delhi I think really wants F1 in India and I am optimistic that maybe we will be able to host our first race in 2009." Indian driver Narain Karthikeyan raced in F1 in 2005 with the Jordan team and is now a tester for Williams.

Meanwhile, two Singapore tycoons, Ong Beng Seng and Arthur Tay, are reported to be negotiating separately with Ecclestone for a street race on the South-East Asian island.

A street circuit designed by German Hermann Tilke is said Singapore reports to have been approved, at least in principle, but it is not clear by whom.

Singapore's Today newspaper says a decision would have to come soon if a race on the island were to go ahead in September '08. And it says: "If the green light is given, Singapore may make F1 history by being the first country to host a night race on a street circuit. The idea of an F1 race at night has been tossed around since 2000, especially for the Asian legs (of the world championship), to capture a bigger slice of the television audience in European markets. F1 drivers will also welcome a night race as they get to avoid the afternoon heat and humidity in other Asian venues such as Sepang in Malaysia.

"It is understood that a September date is being considered so as not to clash with the F1 race in Sepang, which is usually in March or April." Sepang officials have said before they don't like the idea of another GP so close geographically, and it's interesting that the circuit's chairman, Datuk Mokhzani Mahathir, hinted only last week that Malaysia may not extend its F1 contract beyond the existing deal to 2010.

The A1 Grand Prix series organisers are also interested in Singapore and have apparently offered the island state another alternative, although the entry of a Singapore team in the second season of A1 has yielded little.

Incidentally, the A1 "World Cup of Motorsport" resumes in New Zealand this weekend and the Australian round is two weeks later -- that is the first weekend of February -- at Sydney's Eastern Creek.

Apart from Karl Reindler taking over in NZ as Australia's driver in place of Ryan Briscoe, who is set to go racing Porsche sports cars for Roger Penske in the US, the 2003 winner of the Gold Coast Indy race, Ryan Hunter-Reay, will become America's A1 driver this weekend.

"There is still a big risk for the Royal Bank of Scotland as the teams (i.e., the manufacturers) are only committed to the sport until 2012 -- through a commercial agreement they have with SLEC (the key F1 group company) -- and they may decide that they wish to demand a bigger share of the sport's earnings after that," grandprix.com says.

"The new loan means that all the available cash will be used up paying off the loans -- in much the same way as the F1 Eurobond (some years ago) used up all available cash for much of the last seven years.

"There is still talk of a new Concorde Agreement (between the F1 group and participating teams) being signed soon, but the teams know that if they commit to that they will be tied into deals which pay them only half the money that is raised by the sport.

"The big question is obviously the term of the loan because F1 will struggle to pay US$2.9 billion in the course of 10 years. Incomes have been consolidated and revenues have risen, but so too has the need to pay out more to the teams.

"The danger is that if the term of the loan is too long, the teams might finally walk out and do their own thing (a 'rebel' series) in 2012 as they must eventually get tired of being used to fund big banks and trust funds."