MOTORSPORT: Power and the glory of 2018

Australia has had its world champions, but the feats of two other Aussies on Sunday, May 27, 2018, combined to produce the greatest day for our country in motorsport.

Daniel Ricciardo, piloting a Red Bull RB14 with a Renault power unit that lost 25 per cent of its power for the last two-thirds of the Monaco Grand Prix when its kinetic energy recovery system failed, kept Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel at bay, giving the ‘Honey Badger’ the victory cruelly denied him two years earlier.

Just hours later Will Power achieved something even more memorable, becoming the first Australian to win America’s great open-wheeler race, the Indianapolis 500.

Fifteen drivers – almost half the field – led it, but “speed, pit stops, in and out laps and good restarts” over 200 laps of The Brickyard, more unforgiving even than the tight streets of Monaco, delivered team owner Roger Penske an unthinkable 17th victory in ‘The Greatest Spectacle in Racing’.

The kid-made-good from Toowoomba, now 37, has not only mastered America’s oval tracks but become Penske’s most winning driver in IndyCar racing, although others have won the Indy 500 more for him, foremost Rick Mears (four times) and Helio Castroneves (three).

“I felt like I was going to finish my career without every really being recognised as a winning driver because I hadn’t won this race,” Power said.

“It is such a weight off my shoulders. Now I want another one!”

What a year it was for Penske, still the ‘The Captain’ at 81.

Joey Logano won NASCAR’s Cup series for him, Brad Keselowski the Brickyard 400, and – four years after he took control of Dick Johnson’s ailing Australian team – Scott McLaughlin gave him a Supercar Championship too.

That success came with Fords except for Power’s with Chevrolet power in a Dallara chassis.

McLaughlin edged fellow New Zealander Shane Van Gisbergen in a Holden in the Supercar title fight that went to the wire at Newcastle.

But in the most important national race of every season, the Bathurst 1000, there was a fairytale seventh victory for Craig Lowndes in his last year as a full-time Supercar driver.

Roland Dane’s Holden outfit claimed the season’s teams championship, while David Reynolds – denied consecutive Bathurst wins by cramp – won a second straight Barry Sheene Medal as the category’s ‘best and fairest’.

Mercedes continued its F1 dominance in the fifth season of the V6 turbocharged hybrids.
Lewis Hamilton now has five world titles – as many as the late Juan-Manuel Fangio, with the incapacitated Michael Schumacher’s record seven in his sights.

Vettel had won the season-opening GP in Melbourne, then in Bahrain, and scored three more victories – but none after August as Hamilton took six of the last eight to make it 11 for the season.

His career tally of 73 GP wins is 18 shy of the Schu, whose teenage son Mick is on the rise. He won the European F3 Championship and is moving up to F2, with Ferrari and Mercedes eyeing him for the future.

Those top two F1 teams somehow passed up Ricciardo for next season and, after five years at Red Bull Racing (and 12 in the energy drink company’s motorsport system), the carsales.com.au global ambassador stunned the world by signing with Renault’s factory team for 2019-20.

After wins in China and Monaco before the end of May, he endured a horror run of mechanical unreliability with Renault’s power unit as fortune favoured his younger Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen.

It was a character-building season for the man from Perth with the biggest and most frequent smile in sport, and the switch to the Regis may be a step back to go two forward.

But Ricciardo always comes through, often with that trademark overtaking, and in 2021 – even if he hasn’t added to his seven GP wins – he will still be only 31 and riper for a Ferrari or Mercedes seat if Vettel, Charles Leclerc (the scuderia’s new boy, amazingly after just one year in F1) or Valtteri Bottas aren’t performing up to the mark.

The year saw the arrival of the ‘halo’ cockpit protection – we got accustomed to the look and by year’s end it had done its job – and the demise of grid girls.

Next year a new W Series will start in Europe exclusively for women, with three Australians trying to make the field of 18 in turbocharged F3 cars and $US1.5 million in prizemoney.

Toyota became rallying’s world champion manufacturer in just its second season back after a 17-year break.

On some counts the Tommi Makinen-headed Japanese team’s Estonian Ott Tanak was the driver of the year, but Sebastien Ogier claimed a sixth straight world title and his second with Ford team M-Sport, meaning France has had the No.1 rally driver 15 years in a row.

Nine-time champion Sebastien Loeb won Rally Spain in a cameo return with Citroen in October, while Hyundai and its Belgian driver Thierry Neuville let both titles slip from their grasp.

Toyota also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car classic – at its 20th try – although without serious opposition in the premier, hybrid category after the withdrawal of Porsche and Audi the past couple of years.

Fernando Alonso chalked up a second notch in his quest for a triple crown (the F1 world title, Le Mans and the Indy 500) as part of Toyota’s victorious TS050 line-up and, disgruntled with GP racing’s shortage of competitive racing, will focus his attention on America in coming months.

Australia’s brightest young star on the international scene, Matt Campbell, had class (GTE-Am) success at Le Mans and throughout the World Endurance Championship, but his Porsche team has been a bit naughty with its fuel stops and lost points.

And some giants of the sport were lost in 2018, with the deaths on the international scene of Dan Gurney and Don Panoz and at home Bob Jane, a multiple touring car champion and ‘Great Race’ winner, track owner and the man responsible for F1 coming to Australia.