MOTORSPORT: Pendulum swings in Mercedes garage

Something has changed in Formula 1 recently – Nico Rosberg is winning races instead of his teammate Lewis Hamilton.

Some things haven’t changed – Mercedes remains the dominant team, notching its 11th one-two finish of the season in Brazil overnight.

Only the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen completed as many laps, and Vettel joined the Mercedes pair on the podium for the ninth time in the 18 races this season.

Daniel Ricciardo started from the last row of the grid because of the penalty incurred by Red Bull Racing’s decision that he use Renault’s latest power unit, which proved to be not much of an improvement, and he couldn’t make the top 10 for a world championship point, even after the disqualification of Felipe Massa from eighth place.

Volkswagen rounded out the World Rally Championship with its 12th win in 13 rounds, and the eighth victory of the season for its triple world champion Sebastien Ogier, while Citroen held on to second place in the manufacturers’ championship ahead of Hyundai.

The penultimate round of NASCAR’s Sprint Cup in Phoenix, Arizona, has been delayed by rain, but some Australian titles were decided over the weekend – one of them in New Zealand and won by a German.

That was the Australian GT Championship, in which the final round comprised two 60-minute races at Tony Quinn’s Highlands Motorsport Park.

The champion is Chris Mies, whose fourth place in an Audi R8 LMS Ultra with Australian Ryan Millier in the first of those races was enough to clinch it.

Shane Van Gisbergen won the race with Klark Quinn in a McLaren 650S and, after a fourth place later in the day, took the round, then they triumphed on Sunday in the Highlands 101 – over 101 laps of the 4.1km South Island circuit – ahead of Mies and Millier.

Third in the 101 was an Erebus Motorsport Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG driven by Jack Le Brocq and Morgan Haber.

The latter had won the second GT race alone on Saturday – the first win in the category for the 22-year-old from Mackay, Queensland.

Garth Tander and Tony Quinn in another McLaren were an early retirement from the 101 while the Lamborghini Gallardo of Justin McMillan and Dale Wood caught fire in the pitlane.

A decade of the Shannons Nationals ended at Sydney Motorsport Park, with CAMS taking over the running of that series now from founding director Rob Curpatrick.

Jack Perkins, driving an Audi A4, stretched his winning streak in sports sedans to nine with another clean sweep of three, but West Australian Tony Ricciardello – the Shannons ‘Driver of the Decade’ clinched a ninth title in his Alfa-Chev.

Queensland 18-year-old Liam McAdam, in an Eggleston Motorsport Holden Commodore, won the Kumho V8 Touring Car Series ahead of 15-year-old Alex Rullo from WA in a Ford Falcon.

Dylan Thomas and Stuart Kostera won the Australian Four-Hour in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X but the outright AMChamp titles went to the Sherrin team and driver Grant Sherrin in a BMW135i.

Adelaide driver Mark Laucke won the Australian Sports Racer Series from Adam Cranston amid controversy.

Brazil not a happy hunting ground for Hamilton and Massa
Lewis Hamilton has won three F1 world championships but still hasn’t claimed the victory he covets in the home grand prix of his idol, the late Brazilian Ayrton Senna, after nine tries.

Nico Rosberg won at Sao Paulo’s Interlagos circuit today for the second year in a row, 7.75 seconds ahead of Mercedes teammate Hamilton.

Rosberg has now won five GPs this season to Hamilton’s 10, with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel the only other winner this season (three times) and third again today, almost 14.25 seconds behind Rosberg and more than half a minute ahead of his teammate Kimi Raikkonen.

Rosberg has taken the past five pole positions and has won both races since Hamilton sealed his third title in Texas.

Mercedes team chairman Niki Lauda said the pendulum had swung Rosberg’s way because “now he is happy with the car”.

“Now he’s two-tenths quicker [than Hamilton]. It is a head thing. If you feel happy you go quicker,” Lauda said.

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said “it’s a psychological game … it’s all more up here (the head)”, adding that Hamilton had the upper hand “when it mattered”.

However, Rosberg declared: ‘It’s not a head thing.”

“My head is in the same place as in the middle of the season where Lewis was faster. It’s just things have come together better now and it’s an ongoing development.”

However, Rosberg’s utterances will not have convinced the doubters, who will argue that Hamilton may have lost some hunger since wrapping up his latest title, perhaps further evidenced by being out at 3:30am in Monaco early last week and crashing his Pagani Zonda supercar.

Hamilton said something had changed since the Singapore GP in September – an apparent reference to the tyre rules being toughened in the wake of Mercedes being found to have tyre pressures below those specified by supplier Pirelli.

While Mercedes escaped penalty then, because the team was found to have followed the correct procedures, the Mercedes-powered Williams team’s Brazilian veteran Felipe Massa was disqualified in Brazil today after finishing eighth.

Massa’s right-rear tyre was 137 degrees Celsius – 27 degrees above the maximum allowable five minutes before the start. The tyre pressure was 20.6 psi, just 0.1 psi above the minimum starting pressure.

Massa has twice won his home GP, but not since 2008.
Williams will appeal the tyre decision. Its other driver, Valterri Bottas, finished fifth today, while another driver with a Mercedes power unit, Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg, was sixth and Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull teammate Daniil Kyvat seventh.

Frenchman Romain Grosjean, in a Lotus-Mercedes, was promoted to eighth by Massa’s exclusion and 18-year-old Dutchman Max Verstappen advanced from 10th to ninth after some more stunning overtakes in his Renault-powered Toro Rosso.

Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado inherited the final world championship point from the race, having crossed the line 1.5 seconds ahead of Ricciardo.

Both McLaren-Hondas were running at the finish, the last of the cars one lap down (three others were further back) and with Jenson Button ahead of Fernando Alonso.

A no-win situation for Ricciardo from the start
Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner said its strategy had been to give Ricciardo a short final stint on Pirelli’s soft-compound tyre “to see if he could catch and pass some cars in the closing laps”, but it hadn’t paid off.

“We knew this was going to be a difficult track for us and we were proved right,” Horner said.

Renault’s main man attached to RBR, Matthieu Dubois, admitted that “there is still work to extract the performance” from the French company’s updated power unit.

While Ricciardo reported little difference in it, Dubois claimed that it was “positive to see all the measures introduced are paying off in terms of reliability”.

Although RBR has officially entered the world championship again next year, its engine arrangements have not been announced – although it is expected to be, as reported here last week, a Renault internal combustion engine with other elements of the power unit from Illmor Engineering.

“We’re homing in on something,” Horner said, while the team’s chief engineer Paul Monaghan was certain it would be ready by the first pre-season test next year.

Ricciardo said of today’s race: “In the first few laps we made up some positions and did what we could and then we went for an aggressive first stop.

“When we put the ‘prime’ tyres on we didn’t really have the ‘life’ we thought we would, so we still had to do a three-stop race, running at a pretty similar pace to the cars around us.

“Parts of the race were a little bit boring, although I had a nice battle with Sergio (Perez in a Force India-Mercedes) for a few laps, which was encouraging.

“I had to get around him twice and that kept me excited for a while.

“Clearly my grid penalty didn’t help, but Abu Dhabi’s next (the final GP of the season on November 28-30) and that has always been a good circuit for us.

“I enjoy it a lot, so for the last race of the season we’ll hopefully finish strong and in the points.”

Ricciardo is eighth in the championship, 10 points behind teammate Kyvat, while Red Bull will finish fourth in the constructors’ championship with Williams now confirmed in third behind Mercedes and Ferrari.

Formula 1 World Championship driver standings after 18 of 19 rounds - 1. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 363 points; 2. Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 297; 3. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Ferrari) 266; 4. Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Williams) 136; 5. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 135; 6. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 121; 7. Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Red Bull-Renault) 94; 8. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 84; 9. Sergio Perez (Mexico, Force India-Mercedes) 68; 10. Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 52; 11. Max Verstappen (Netherlands, Toro Rosso-Renault) 48; 12. Romain Grosjean (France, Lotus-Mercedes) 47; 13. Felipe Nasr (Brazil, Sauber-Ferrari) 27; 14. Pastor Maldonado (Venezuela, Lotus-Mercedes) 26; 15. Carlos Sainz Junior (Spain, Toro Rosso-Renault) 18; 16. Jenson Button (GB, McLaren-Honda) 16; 17. Fernando Alonso (Spain, McLaren-Honda) 11; 18. Marcus Ericsson (Sweden, Sauber-Ferrari) 9.

F1 constructor standings – 1. Mercedes 660 points; 2. Ferrari 401; 3. Williams-Mercedes 257; 4. Red Bull-Renault 178; 5. Force India-Mercedes 120; 6. Lotus-Mercedes 73; 7. Toro Rosso-Renault 66; 8. Sauber-Ferrari 36; 9. McLaren-Honda 27.

VW completes domination, Citroen ahead of Hyundai
The final round of the World Rally Championship in Wales was a mud bath, with torrential rain and gales – and Volkswagen making it a dozen wins.

Its Polo Rs were fastest on 15 of the 19 stages and Frenchman Sebastien Ogier was victorious, Norwegian Andreas Mikkelsen third and Finn Jari-Matti Latvala won the Power Stage after two “retirements” earlier in the event.

Citroen’s Northern Irishman Kris Meeke’s second place, 26 seconds behind Ogier, combined with Norwegian Mads Ostberg’s seventh in another DS3 was enough to secure second in the manufacturers’ championship, six points ahead of Hyundai.

Spaniard Dani Sordo and New Zealander Hayden Paddon were fourth and fifth in Hyundai i20s, with the Kiwi 9.2 seconds behind his teammate and a fraction more than three minutes slower than Ogier.

Ostberg had been as high as fourth before sliding into a ditch, after which water kept finding its way into the cockpit of the DS3 and had to be mopped up.

Hyundai’s other two factory drivers, Belgian Thierry Neuville – demoted to the second line-up for this event in a swap with Paddon – and Dutchman Kevin Abbring, were retirements on Saturday and Friday respectively.

Paddon was satisfied to have “finished the season on a charge”.

“It’s been a positive season … the podium in Sardinia was definitely a standout,” Paddon said.

Hyundai team principal Michel Nandan said Sordo and Paddon’s efforts in Wales had been “highly commendable” but “it wasn’t enough to overhaul Citroen in the [season’s] classification”.

“For our second season in WRC against more experienced rivals I think we can be pleased with what we have achieved,” Nandan said.

“We have scored four podiums in three rallies and have finished in the top five in all but one event.”

While Paddon has made big strides this year, Hyundai’s top scorer, Neuville, finished with 90 points compared with last year’s 105 – which included a victory in Germany on VW’s “home ground”, something the Wolfsburg manufacturer made amends for this season with a one-two-three result.

However, Hyundai has leapfrogged Ford squad M-Sport this year.
Meeke’s victory in Argentina in April was the only round not won by VW.

World Rally Championship final driver standings after 13 rounds – 1. Sebastien Ogier (France, Volkswagen Motorsport) 263 points; 2. Jari-Matti Latvala (Finland, Volkswagen Motorsport) 183; 3. Andreas Mikkelsen (Norway, Volkswagen Motorsport II) 171; 4. Mads Ostberg (Norway, Citroen World Rally Team) 116; 5. Kris Meeke (Great Britain, Citroen WRT 112; 6. Thierry Neuville (Belgium, Hyundai World Rally Team) 90; 7. Elfyn Evans (GB, M-Sport World Rally Team, Ford) 89; 8.  Daniel Sordo (Spain, Hyundai WRT) 89; 9. Hayden Paddon (New Zealand, Hyundai) 84; 10. Ott Tanak (Estonia, M-Sport Ford) 63.

WRC final manufacturer standings – 1. Volkswagen Motorsport 413 points; 2. Citroen World Rally Team 230; 3. Hyundai Motorsport 224; 4. M-Sport World Rally Team, Ford 181; 5. Volkswagen Motorsport II 131.