MOTORSPORT: Power hot for Indianapolis 500

Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull team has virtually written off this Formula One season after he finished a lap down in the Spanish Grand Prix, but Will Power is cause for Australian delight with a victory at Indianapolis.

Reigning IndyCar champion Power’s triumph was in a race on the road course at America’s famed Brickyard, and now he’s aiming to double up in “The greatest spectacle in racing” – the Indianapolis 500 on the Superspeedway there on May 24.

Fellow Australian James Davison is close to clinching a drive in that classic with Dale Coyne Racing after completing the distance midfield on his debut last year – a creditable feat for a rookie.

Power is the fifth winner in five rounds of this year’s IndyCar series and just five points behind the leader, Penske teammate Juan Pablo Montoya.

“My focus nowadays is so much on the 500 more than it ever was, now that I’ve won a championship,” Power said.

“Just imagine winning the GP (last weekend’s road race) and the 500 – it would be unbelievable.

“I’m halfway there. I’m very determined to get it done.”

Power’s best finish in seven previous starts in the 500 was fifth in 2009 – his first year driving for Team Penske.

No Australian has won America’s biggest open-wheeler event.

Power led 65 of the 82 laps of the weekend’s road race in his Chevrolet-powered Dallara car, finishing 1.5 seconds ahead of Graham Rahal with Honda power – after Chevy-engined cars occupied the first 10 places on the starting grid.

Montoya finished third and Sebastien Bourdais fourth, while Australian-born New Zealander Scott Dixon’s front-row start counted for little as he was drilled by another Penske driver, Helio Castroneves, at the first corner and finished 10th. Brazilian Castroenves was sixth.

Qualifying for the 500 is next weekend.

Mercedes further ahead in F1 procession
Five races into the F1 World Championship three of the races have been duds – Australia, China and Spain – and Mercedes appears further ahead than ever after the first European round.

The tristar’s factory team chalked up its third one-two finish of the year in Barcelona, although this time it was Nico Rosberg ahead of reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton.

“Everything came together,” Rosberg said of his first win of the year and the ninth of his career, which narrowed Hamilton’s championship lead to 20 points with 15 races remaining – the next on May 24 in Monaco, where Rosberg has won the past two years.

The German son of Finland’s 1982 world champion Keke Rosberg has now been on the F1 podium 31 times – as often as Australia’s late triple world champion Sir Jack Brabham.

Rosberg achieved the feat 56 years to the day since Brabham’s first GP win, at Monaco – and which also was the first F1 victory for a rear-engined car (a Cooper).

Despite Ferrari’s major upgrades for the Spanish GP, Sebastian Vettel finished more than 45 seconds behind Rosberg at the chequered flag – although the four-time world champion’s fourth podium in his first five races with Ferrari is the best start to a career any driver has had with the revered Scuderia.

Valtteri Bottas, the young Finnish driver seemingly in line to replace his 2007 world champion countryman Kimi Raikkonen at Ferrari next year, split the Italian team’s cars in the Barcelona finishing order in his Williams-Mercedes.

The first four cars ended in the order they started in yet another processional Barcelona race notable for the huge number of empty seats in the grandstands. The low spectator numbers were exacerbated by the quietness of the modern F1 cars, and Spanish hero Fernando Alonso not having a chance in the new Honda-powered McLaren.

Alonso was out before half-distance with a brake failure that almost claimed his jack-man as he pulled into the pits for what became retirement from the race, while teammate Jenson Button described the twitchiness of the other McLaren as “very scary”.

So diplomatic about the uncompetitive McLaren-Honda until now, a downcast Button said he no longer had expectations of finishing a race in the top 10 this season.

There were whispers at Barcelona of Mercedes and Ferrari perhaps having found a way to boost fuel-flow rates temporarily during races without falling foul of the governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile’s fuel meters.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff mentioned to a German newspaper that his drivers had an “additional mode” at their disposal.

The FIA has told teams that fuel pressure must remain constant and has vowed to make close checks on fuel systems.

“We will be carrying out careful physical inspections,” race director Charlie Whiting said.

It was a fuel-flow irregularity that led to Daniel Ricciardo’s disqualification from second place at last year’s Australian Grand Prix.

Ricciardo finished a lap down in Barcelona last night, although his seventh place was an improvement on his 10th place on the grid.

His Russian teammate Daniil Kyvat wound up 10th after having out-qualified Ricciardo by two places, while the youngsters in Red Bull’s junior team Toro Rosso, Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen, qualified ahead of both in fifth and sixth places with similar Renault power units.

The race was a different story, with Ricciardo the best Renault-powered finishers and Sainz and Verstappen ninth and 11th at the chequered flag.

Ricciardo was “more satisfied” than he had been throughout practice and qualifying.
“We achieved everything we could … seventh was the maximum I could get out of the car,” he said of the race.

“There were some parts of the race that were encouraging, but we’re still further off than where we want to be – but we’ll keep pushing.

“We came here with upgrades, but they didn’t give us what we were expecting, so that’s something we’ll keep working on.

“We’re still a fair bit behind (third-placed constructor) Williams, but I think we have a good chance to close the gap a bit further in Monaco.”

Red Bull boss tells Renault to ‘just go for it’
Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner said Ricciardo had driven a strong race and “did a great job to extract everything he could out of the car to finish seventh.”

“We are nowhere near winning a GP,” Horner said. “You could see we got lapped today.”

Horner urged Renault to throw caution to the wind and focus more on the performance of its power unit now than its reliability.

“It is a positive that we got four [Renault] engines to the finish without any white smoke (Ricciardo’s third engine of the season exploded at the finish of the previous GP in Bahrain), so it's a step forward from where we have been,” Horner said.

“Reliability seems to have been a step forward, so the focus desperately needs to turn to performance before too long.

“We are so far on the back foot with reliability anyway that this year is pretty much a write-off.

“You have just got to go for it, even if you end up using 20 engines (the limit is four before incurring a 10-place grid penalty and a move to increase it to five at a meeting of the F1 strategy group on Thursday is now expected to be defeated after supposed unanimous agreement two weeks ago).

“It would be better to learn and make progress in preparation for next year than be conservative.

“It is far easier to make a fast engine reliable than it is to make a reliable car fast. Our philosophy has always been to push performance.

"It is not enjoyable being in a GP like today when you are just going around; you're not really racing.

“The determination is to get back. The frustration we have is that not all of it is in our hands.

“They (Renault) know what the deficit is, the question is how are they going to make that up – and that’s the bit they don’t know at the moment.

“They are looking at different solutions but they haven’t got a definitive direction yet.

“Hopefully they are homing in on that – and of course things in the engine world seem to take an awful lot longer than in the chassis world.”

Formula One World Championship driver standings after five rounds – 1. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 111 points; 2. Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 91; 3. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Ferrari) 80; 4. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 52; 5. Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Williams-Mercedes) 42; 6. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 39; 7. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 25; 8. Romain Grosjean (France, Lotus-Mercedes) 16; 9. Felipe Nasr (Brazil, Sauber-Ferrari) 14; 10. Carlos Sainz Junior (Spain, Toro Rosso-Renault) 8; 11. Max Verstappen (Netherlands, Toro Rosso-Renault) 6; 12. Nico Huelkenberg (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 6; 13. Sergio Perez (Mexico, Force India-Mercedes) 5; 14. Marcus Ericsson (Sweden, Sauber-Ferrari) 5; 15. Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Red Bull-Renault) 5; 16.

F1 constructor standings – 1. Mercedes 202 points; 2. Ferrari 132; 3. Williams-Mercedes  81; 4. Red Bull-Renault 30; 5. Sauber-Ferrari 19; 6. Lotus-Mercedes 16; 7. Toro Rosso-Renault 14; 8. Force India-Mercedes 11.

The seventh race of the series produced a multi-car, opening-lap crash. The race was won by Switzerland’s former Toro Rosso driver Sebastien Buemi.

Buemi is the first two-time winner and also is the first driver to win a Formula E race from pole position.

Driving for French team e.dams in Formula E, Buemi beat Brazil’s series leader Lucas di Grassi and another Brazilian ex-F1 racer, Nelson Piquet Junior.

Three rounds remain in Formula E’s first season – in Berlin, Moscow and London over the next seven weeks.