MOTORSPORT: Next Daniel Ricciardo a Kiwi?

More to the point, will the next GP driver from this part of the world even be an Australian? Shock! Horror! Might it be a New Zealander instead?

Australia has a couple of international open-wheeler driving prospects on the radar, but so too does NZ – and they may be better placed.

Matthew Brabham, the 20-year-old grandson of Australia’s late triple world champion Sir Jack Brabham, has done exceptionally well in America, winning the US F2000 and Pro Mazda open-wheeler titles the past two years.

This season, driving for the equally famous Andretti family’s team, Brabham is fourth in the Indy Lights series. He has F1 ambitions but the path he’s on is leading him towards IndyCar, including the Indianapolis 500 in which his grandfather started the rear-engined revolution.

But success in IndyCar racing no longer opens doors to F1, even if your name is Brabham.

A younger Australian prospect is Anton De Pasquale (pictured), winner of last year’s final Australian Formula Ford Championship and who has made an excellent start to his European career.

De Pasquale leads the Formula Renault 1.6 Championship, with two wins and two second places in four races so far at famous circuits (Zandvoort in Holland and Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium).

The third round of the series this weekend is at Nurburgring – the modern, short version, not the long and revered Nordschleife 'Green Hell'.

Like Ricciardo, who has been in Europe seven years and only just turned 25, De Pasquale (18) has made the move to Europe early and is making his mark in a highly-competitive junior formula.

But New Zealanders Mitch Evans (pictured) and Richie Stanaway are nearer to breaking into F1 than either of our Aussies at this stage.

Evans, 20, and who has had Mark Webber’s support for several years already, won a GP2 race last weekend at Silverstone – the main support category to F1 at the British Grand Prix in which Ricciardo finished third. And Stanaway, 22, won a race there in GP3, the next level down and in which Evans took the title in 2012.

NZ has a much stronger open-wheeler racing scene than Australia, but (as Ricciardo, Webber and before them Australia’s 1980 world champion Alan Jones have shown) most important is getting away from the comfort of home and into the cut and thrust of European road racing at a young age.

Whether the next F1 driver from Australasia be an Aussie or a Kiwi, it’s clear the “production lines” in the two countries are still producing plenty of talent to follow in the tracks of Jack Brabham, Jones and long-ago Kiwi greats Denny Hulme, Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon.

Red Bull ‘action plan’ to catch Mercedes… Next season!
While Ricciardo is the only driver to have broken the domination of Mercedes pair Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in F1 this year, the most powerful figure in the Red Bull racing empire, Dr Helmut Marko, has said it will be next year before the Aussie and teammate Sebastian Vettel have a car capable of matching the Mercs.

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner went very public a fortnight ago with his dissatisfaction at engine supplier Renault’s performance in this first year of hybrid F1 cars and the French company promptly announced a management restructure.

But rules that largely freeze development of the hybrid power units during the season mean Red Bull and Ferrari are unlikely to gain little ground on the Mercs in the remaining 10 GPs this year.

But Marko, the Austrian ex-GP racer who is Red Bull energy drink tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz’s adviser on motor racing, said an action plan was now in place for Red Bull-Renault to close the gap to Mercedes within the next 12 months.

“We start the partnership [which won the past four world championships] on a new basis,” Marko said this week.

“We agree that the current [Renault] engine is by far not on the limits and can be improved in several areas – all measures within the frozen rules. We started the week on Monday with a meeting to determine immediate measures that we will introduce in the upcoming weeks.

"Mid-term we will go further, which should bring us on par with Mercedes during the 2015 season.”

Marko said reliability improvements as well as performance enhancements were on the agenda.

“Both sides know what is possible for us and what we have to do,” he said.

Nissan is the only winless brand among the five makes participating after 22 races in Australasia’s premier championship this season.

“We need to be moving forward in the second half of the season,” Nissan’s global motorsport boss Darren Cox has said.

Cox told Auto Action magazine’s Editor-at-large Mark Fogarty that long-promised new parts from Nismo in Japan would boost the performance and fuel economy of the engines in the four Nissan Altimas run by the Kelly brothers in the endurance races in September-October.

“I have every confidence in the Kelly boys [Todd and Rick] and Nissan Australia to try to turn it around because we can’t go into the enduro rounds qualifying outside the top 10,” Cox said.

But Cox renewed his questioning of the parity system in V8 Supercars, doubting that the revised aerodynamic package of the Altimas this season had been properly aligned with the shape of this season’s newcomer, Volvo’s S60.

Cox believes the Altima’s main handicap is high-speed drag, despite the improved rear wing and body kit homologated for this year.

James Moffat’s victory in a race at Victoria’s Winton circuit last year remains the only win for Nissan in the V8 Supercar Championship. That also was the only race in which the Altimas were allowed to run on E70 fuel rather than the usual E85.

Great divide is here to stay
The likely clash of the V8 Supercar pre-season test with the Bathurst 12-Hour next February, robbing the GT enduro of domestic racing’s biggest-name drivers, remains at the forefront of the national scene at the minute.

And it is clear that CAMS – the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport – is not going to intervene to avert the clash.

Entries have opened for the 12-Hour and the first lodged was from Melbourne-based Maranello Motorsport, which won this year’s event with a Ferrari 458 in which Craig Lowndes was one of the four drivers.

While Lowndes looks likely to miss the 2015 event because of the V8 Supercar test at Sydney Motosport Park the Maranello Motorsport team principal Mark Coffey said “there are a lot of factory Ferrari drivers lining up to come and drive”.

Most likely are thought to be Italian ex-F1 drivers Giancarlo Fisichella and Gianmaria Bruni.

Meanwhile, no word yet from V8 Supercars on acceptance of the three applications for wildcard entries to October’s Bathurst 1000 – one from New Zealand’s Super Black to run a Ford Performance Racing Falcon and two from Dragon Racing for ex-Garry Rogers Motorsport Holden Commodores.

Crucial couple of months for Ambrose in US
Australia’s NASCAR racer Marcos Ambrose has eight races left to secure a place in this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup title.

The first opportunity is this weekend’s round at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway but Ambrose’s best chance will be on August 10 at the Watkins Glen road course in upstate New York where he’s had multiple successes.

Ambrose has had two top-five finishes this season and four top 10s. He is currently 19th in the championship – still two places ahead of teammate Aric Almirola, who won the rain-shortened round at Daytona last weekend for the Richard Petty Motorsports squad.

That win has made Almirola the best placed of the RPM pair so far to make the expanded field of 16 for The Chase over the final 10 rounds of the Cup.

Whether Ambrose earns a place in The Chase may have a big bearing on if he remains in NASCAR next year – or perhaps returns, in association with another legendary American Roger Penske, to the V8 Supercar  Championship he won twice before his move to the US almost a decade ago.

News on Penske’s Australian racing intentions is expected soon – but he too may be waiting to see what progress Ambrose makes in NASCAR in coming weeks.

The city was to have hosted rallycross on the first weekend of August but organisers said the cancellation was “due to event location feasibility in Detroit”.

Instead a round of that series in Los Angeles in September will become a double-header.

Organisers said they “look forward to racing in the Motor City in 2015”, when perhaps the “event location feasibility” issue will have been overcome.