MOTORSPORT: Pundits plug Porsche for F1

While Formula 1 has tried to hog the international motorsport spotlight this week, the most significant announcements – rather than speculation and puffery – have come from elsewhere.

BMW has confirmed its entry into electric racing, set to become a fully-fledged manufacturer in the Formula E open-wheeler series. And Honda is going sports car racing again with its Acura brand in America – in association with the great Roger Penske.

And, yes, there has been plenty happening in F1 – or at least noise – in the lead-up to this weekend’s British Grand Prix.

Silverstone has chosen to use a clause allowing it to opt out in 2019 from its long-term deal to host that race. The contract is due to run until 2026, but the British Racing Drivers’ Club, which owns and operates Silverstone – the only circuit of F1 standard in the UK now – says it’s costing too much to put on, despite attracting the biggest crowd in the world championship.

F1’s owners, US-based Liberty Media, held a promotion in central London during the week, with all 10 teams there and 19 of this year’s 20 drivers

The absentee driver was Lewis Hamilton, who chose to take some R&R in Greece. However carsales.com.au global ambassador Daniel Ricciardo thrilled the crowd with a demonstration run that included some doughnuts that were not in the official script.

Liberty wasn’t happy with Silverstone’s announcement detracting from this promotion, a tease for the idea of a street race in the British capital. Silverstone’s ‘pull-out’ also is a bit of a tease – a bargaining chip for a better deal.

There has been speculation about Porsche perhaps returning to F1 – maybe in 2021, although there are moves to bring forward new rules now being framed to 2020.

While normally we would be dubious about such ‘news’, it comes from German publication Auto Motor und Sport‘s well-informed, Michael Schmidt.

Porsche is said to have lost interest in the World Endurance Championship for hybrid sports cars that it has largely dominated since 2014, with three straight 24 Hours of Le Mans victories.

The talk is of Porsche renewing the association it had with McLaren in the 1980s – in place of Honda, with whom its ‘remarriage’ has been disastrous. Honda may even be replaced in the McLaren cars next year by Mercedes customer powerplants.

But might a new Porsche F1 powerplant, if it were to happen, be more likely and appropriate in a Red Bull car, perhaps creating the opportunity for Daniel Ricciardo to fulfil his world title potential?

This year’s world championship leader Sebastian Vettel will trial a big windscreen (being called a shield) on his Ferrari for a few laps in first practice for the British GP tonight. The shield is the preferred alternative of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) to the earlier ‘halo’ concept intended to provide greater cockpit protection for drivers in the wake of the deaths of Jules Bianchi in F1 and Justin Wilson and Dan Wheldon in Indy racing.

F1 has entered a new partnership with Snapchat that begins this weekend and is considering using computer gamers to help trial new rules in a virtual environment to assess whether suggested changes would be successful in reality.

Before the detail on some of the week’s international developments, some pleasing news on the local grassroots scene – historic Formula Ford Racing and the Hyundai Excel one-make class have been added to the support program for the Bathurst 6-Hour next Easter (March 30-April 1).

They’re in addition to Group N historic touring cars, production sports cars and the Porsche Club of NSW regularity.

Meanwhile, the new RXAus Australian Rallycross Championship is at Winton in northern Victoria this weekend. A new gravel section on the infield combined with part of the bitumen track that includes the old start-finish line between what are now turns two and three form a fast, wide 1.3km course for the two-day event, the fourth round of the series.

Why BMW is going Formula E
BMW has been involved in Formula E since its inception, but now it’s going to build its own powertrain for the all-electric series from the 2018-19 season.

The company has supplied the i8 safety car and i3 medical and course cars to the series from the outset and has supported American team Andretti Autosports technically since the second season.

Rather than return to F1, which it quit when it handed Swiss team Sauber back to its founder in 2009, the Bavarian brand now wants to ramp up promotion of its hybrid and electric technology through FE.

Unlike F1, which predominantly races on permanent road courses, with its ‘green’ credentials and strong FIA backing, Formula E has engineered its way on to short street circuits in the middle of some of the world’s major cities.

BMW’s entry as a fully-fledged manufacturer in FE’s fifth season (with Andretti still representing it) will coincide with the end of the mid-race car changeovers that have been necessary so far because of the short life of the batteries used.

It sees its full participation taking technology transfer to a new level.

“Through our involvement in Formula E, we are addressing the development towards sustainable and emission-free mobility in the automobile industry and are also making a contribution to the brand’s progression to BMW iNEXT,” said Klaus Frohlich, board member in charge of development at BMW.

“This project is thoroughly driven by technology. We are using Formula E as a development laboratory, operating under the unique conditions that prevail in motor racing -- with very unique demands and opportunities.

“The borders between production and motor racing development are more blurred at BMW i Motorsport than in any other project. The result is a technology transfer on a whole new level.”

BMW motorsport director Jens Marquardt said FE, which is in New York this weekend, “has developed fantastically as a racing series”.

“As a new, technology-based project, it is perfectly suited to the BMW Group and BMW Motorsport,” Marquardt said.

“The changes we required for our involvement will come into effect in season five… We are already seeing in our development work that colleagues from the production and motorsport departments are collaborating in a completely new way. The result is new paths, which we are forging together in the matter of electric drivetrains,” he said.

Audi and Jaguar are both confirmed for the formula. BMW rival Mercedes-Benz has an option on a place in FE for the 2018-19 season and can exercise it by October. However, it would only be allowed to enter as a customer team that season, using another manufacturer’s powertrain – hardly likely to be attractive to it.

Mercedes motorsport chief Toto Wolff, principal of the company’s F1 team that has dominated the V6 hybrid era that began in 2014, has said it is “trying to form an educated opinion” on FE.

“It is something that is very different, although I think they’ve done a great job in establishing the series in a couple of years only,” Wolff said.

Renault has been the most prominent and successful manufacturer in FE while FIA president Jean Todt is hopeful that the series “one day” will interest Ferrari.

Team Penske-Honda Acura tie-up ‘monumental’
Roger Penske runs Fords in America’s NASCAR and Australia’s Supercars Championship and Chevrolet engines in IndyCar.

And now it will be Honda’s official team in sports car racing.

The International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) in the US is calling Penske’s arrival in its US sports car series next year “monumental”.

The team will field official entries for Honda’s prestige Acura brand in the series’ Daytona Prototype international (DPi) flagship category against dominant American make Cadillac and Japanese rivals Mazda and Nissan.

Penske last fielded sports cars in America in the second half of last decade for Porsche, with Australian Ryan Briscoe among his drivers.

The reveal of the ARX05 (Acura Racing eXperimental, generation 5) and its drivers will come at California’s Monterey Car Week in mid-August, but Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves (winners of five Indianapolis 500s between them) are expected to be in one of the two Penske cars.

While they will have bodywork developed by Acura, the chassis will be the very successful French-developed ORECA07. The engine will be the already race-proven, production-based Acura AR35TT twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre V6.

“Roger Penske is already an important part of the Acura family as one of our great dealers and now it is a thrill to have him as part of the Acura Motorsports family,” said Jon Ikeda, the brand’s senior vice-president and general manager.

The Honda NSX is badged as an Acura in the USA. Via this car the brand has had recent GT3 success in the IMSA series, with Michael Shank Racing fielding in the GTD (Daytona) category.

The race debut of the new Team Penske Acuras will be in the Rolex 24 (hours) at Daytona early next year.

Penske’s burning ambition in sports car racing has been to return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France and win it outright, but the LMP1 category there is for high-tech hybrids while the DPIs are ‘conventional’ cars based on the current LMP2 machinery.

The Silverstone sums that aren’t adding up
The British Racing Drivers’ Club doesn’t really want to give up running the British Grand Prix at Silverstone – it just wants a better deal.

It signed a 17-year contract for the race from 2010 with Bernie Ecclestone, who until recently ran F1. It thought the annual fee of £12 million (A$20 million) then to be a bargain. This year, however, that fee is £17 million (A$28.4 million) – and the BRDC thinks it’s too much.

Indeed, it’s been thinking that for a few years now as the figure has crept up annually.

The BRDC says it lost £2.8 million (almost A$4.7 million) on the British GP in 2015 and £4.8 million (about A$8 million) last year.

“We expect to lose a similar amount this year,” says BRDC president, John Grant.

It’s not clear whether he’s talking about the 2015 figure, that for 2016, or perhaps the two combined as this year’s potential loss.

That’s why it has triggered its opt-out clause, which would mean it giving up the British GP after 2019, even though the contract was intended to run until 2026.

The race – in which Lewis Hamilton is chasing a hat-trick this weekend – attracts the biggest race-day crowd in the F1 world championship, about 120,000.

“The event generates a lot of revenue… It’s a question of managing our costs, which we do extremely well. [But] The reason the costs are higher than the revenue is the promoter’s fee – simple as that,” Grant stated.

“It’s a crazy situation, where the top end of the sport is being subsidised by the grassroots, rather than the other way around. It’s not one we can carry on supporting,” he said.

F1’s new owners Liberty Media want to keep a British GP – it’s one of the ‘grand slam’ rounds of the championship, even if the points are the same at each race. But Liberty chairman Chase Carey is not happy at the timing of the BRDC’s announcement, especially as it cut across the big London promotion.

“The week leading up to the British GP should be a week of great celebration for F1 and Silverstone,” Carey said.

“We deeply regret that Silverstone has chosen instead to use this week to posture and position themselves and invoke a break clause that will take effect in three years’ time.

“We offered to extend the current deadlines in order to focus on everything that is great about Silverstone and Formula 1. Regretfully, the Silverstone management has chosen to look for a short-term advantage to benefit their position.”

While a recent legislative change in Britain has made a GP on a street circuit possible, perhaps even in London, more likely is that Liberty and the BRDC will find an accommodation.

They can’t afford to be without each other.