MOTORSPORT: 'Party time' for Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo is in ‘party mode’ at the Austrian Grand Prix, a home race for Red Bull Racing.

But a big question mark has arisen there over whether there’s an invitation for Ricciardo to ‘party’ with a better team next year, specifically Ferrari.

Red Bull motosport ‘godfather’, Helmut Marko, has painted a picture that Ricciardo, the carsales.com.au global ambassador, doesn’t have an offer of a superior car next season and can’t do better than staying at RBR with Honda power.

Marko says that, as with Lewis Hamilton’s anticipated contract extension at Mercedes, “it’s just about the details” now that Ricciardo and Red Bull will stick together.

Ricciardo says he wants to have his future sorted by the Formula 1 season’s northern summer break, from late July through most of August, and that “hopefully I’ll have something soon for everyone”.

Talk at the Red Bull Ring near Spielberg in Austria’s Styrian Mountains is strong that Kimi Raikkonen will be ditched by Ferrari at the end of this season and that Charles Leclerc, the 20-year-old from Monaco who has raced in just eight GPs for Sauber, will be his replacement.

Marko claims to “know Ricciardo did not receive an offer from Ferrari”.

The authorative Autosport is reporting that Ricciardo “was seriously considered [by Ferrari], but deemed too expensive”.

Since when has money been an object for Ferrari in F1?

Marko’s “knowledge” is probably based on chats with Ferrari’s No.1 driver, Sebastian Vettel, who won four world titles with RBR before joining the Italian team after having been outshone by Ricciardo in 2014 – the first year of the V6 hybrids.

Despite a public comment a few weeks back that he wouldn’t mind Ricciardo as a teammate again, Vettel won’t want the Australian beside him at Ferrari.

But what Marko may be overlooking is that the Italians might be happy for him to think Ricciardo is not on their shopping list only to find, perhaps, that the Leclerc talk could all be a blind to disguise their intentions.

It’s quite possible, after the way Maranello dislocated Fernando Alonso four years ago by signing Vettel, that Ricciardo – best-qualified to be the next Ferrari driver – could be recruited without the German’s knowledge, let alone blessing, until it’s announced.

Meanwhile, Ricciardo turns 29 this Sunday with hopes of emulating the birthday GP successes of the late James Hunt in the Netherlands in 1976 and Jean Alesi in Canada in 1995.

Ricciardo delights in the Austrian culture, dressing in the traditional garb and dining on wiener schnitzels, but the most important ‘party’ for him this weekend is that RBR’s engine supplier Renault is introducing extra power for qualifying in an attempt to match the so-called ‘party modes’ of Mercedes and Ferrari.

Renault is late coming to this ‘party’ – the vital upgrade which could help RBR gain better grid positions – essential in this era of particularly processional racing – was due at the Canadian GP three weeks ago.

While Ricciardo is 49 points behind Hamilton and 35 behind Vettel in the drivers’ championship, and RBR a distant third to Mercedes and Ferrari in the constructors’ standings, the ever-optimistic Aussie says, with the season barely one-third over, “it’s still too early early to count us out”.

He says RBR now has “kind of got all the cards on the table” in its contract negotiations with him.

“Things are getting to a point where I know what’s what. They’ve pretty much got everything now laid out in front of me and it’s really up to me to understand what I think of it,” Ricciardo said.

But he is adamant that he hasn’t yet made a decision and that RBR going with Honda power next year – which Marko paints as making it “a factory team for the first time” – won’t greatly influence it.

RBR wants to keep him and Max Verstappen, still only 20 and already on a mega contract, together but, Marko says, “not at any price”.

Marko claims there won’t be offers to Ricciardo from either of the top two teams, while McLaren – reportedly trying to lure him at $US20 million a year – and Renault’s factory team would be a backward step.

“Mercedes and Ferrari have a No.1 driver [each] who is clearly declared. I know Ricciardo did not receive an offer from Ferrari,” Marko said.

Valtteri Bottas is likely to remain at Mercedes, especially as he is managed by that team’s principal, Toto Wolff.

McLaren has not won a GP for five years and neither of its cars made it out of the first session of qualifying in France last weekend nor scored points in the race.

“[And] I don’t think Renault is playing in the budget regions that Ricciardo has in mind,” Marko said.

“Daniel is in a situation where he has no sporting alternative to us.

“He probably imaged it differently.”

It could all be a game of poker though. A few weeks ago there were reports that Ferrari indeed had an exclusive option to sign Ricciardo up to a particular, but unspecified, point this year.

And the boys at Maranello could be playing ducks and drakes, even with Vettel, in letting the world think that Leclerc, undoubtedly a super talent but with so little experience, is in line for a Ferrari drive so soon.

It still makes sense that he could replace Vettel in two, three or four years down the track, with Ricciardo the next cab off the rank – that is, next year – at F1’s most successful team.

A Wolff at the door of Formula E

As interest bubbles in Australia obtaining a round of the Formula E electric open-wheeler global championship, one of the teams in the four-year-old category now has a woman team principal – Susie Wolff.

The wife of Mercedes F1 team principal and former DTM (German touring car championship) driver and Williams F1 tester will not only lead Monaco-based Venturi Formula E team but has become a shareholder in it.

“Formula E is the perfect environment for this step into team management,” she said.

“It is full of potential, breaking the mould for traditional racing, and the series is enjoying an exciting phase of expansion at the moment.”

Its fourth season concludes in New York in mid-July and when the next begins in Saudi Arabia in December with its second-generation cars with longer battery life there will be an 11th team, with Venturi supplying newcomers HWA – the most successful team in DTM history and long associated with Mercedes.

HWA has already been involved with Venturi in the category.

Mercedes is planning its own entry to Formula E in the sixth season – a move interpreted as perhaps signalling a diminishing interest in F1 by the German manufacturer.

Adelaide is the frontrunner to become Australia’s Formula E venue, ahead of Gold Coast, Perth and Sydney.

British-based Indian billionaire Sanjeev Gupta, who wants to build electric road cars in South Australia, is involved in the push for Adelaide which also has Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) support.