MOTORSPORT: Rally Oz victor in no man's land

Mercedes won’t name a replacement for retired Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg before January 3, and – while much of the World Rally Championship jigsaw has been pieced together – recent Rally Australia winner Andreas Mikkelsen is without a drive for next year.

Signs are emerging that the Williams F1 team will release Valtteri Bottas to Mercedes, maybe in return for free Merc power units, and perhaps drag Felipe Massa back out of his brief retirement.

Williams needs a driver 25 or older to partner 18-year-old Canadian rookie Lance Stroll. Apart from anything else, that’s a stipulation – for promotional reasons – of major Williams sponsor, drinks giant Martini.

Paddy Lowe, the technical director of Mercedes through its dominance of the first three years of the hybrid era in F1, appears to be headed back to Williams, his original team.

Perhaps, like the esteemed Ross Brawn, he is uncomfortable with conflicting messages he gets from Mercedes motorsport boss and team principal Toto Wolff and the Merc team’s executive chairman, Austrian triple world champion driver Niki Lauda.

James Allison, former technical director at the Lotus team which has since become Renault’s factory squad and more recently Ferrari, with which he parted company in July, is poised to replace Lowe at Mercedes.

While the WRC champion of the past four years Sebastien Ogier has found a new home at Ford team M-Sport and his Volkswagen teammate Jari-Matti Latvala with Toyota, Mikkelsen’s options are narrow with the new season little more than a month away at the Monte Carlo Rally on January 19-22.

Mikkelsen’s manager Erik Veiby had said a month ago: “I am confident we will see Andreas with a top team.”

But where?

Full House At Hyundai
Hyundai, runner-up to Volkswagen this year before the German manufacturer’s sudden withdrawal, has a full house for 2017 – Belgian Thierry Neuville, New Zealander Hayden Paddon and Spaniard Dani Sordo.

Citroen, back full-time next year, was interested in picking up Ogier but not Latvala or Mikkelsen. As Citroen team boss Yves Matton said: “They are not French and they are not world champions.”

Instead, Citroen was happy to stick with the two youngsters it already had signed – Irishman Craig Breen and Frenchman Stephane Lefebvre – along with its main man, Northern Irishman Kris Meeke, in its C3s.

M-Sport has one of the stars of this year’s WRC, Estonian Ott Tanak, to partner Ogier.

Might it create an opening for 27-year-old Mikkelsen though?

Complicating that is that Mads Ostberg, two years older and another Norwegian, was the top Ford driver in the WRC this year with M-Sport and is without a gig for next season too at the minute. As is Welshman Elfyn Evans, a long-time M-Sport protege.

Not in Mikkelsen’s favour is that he was beaten to second this season by Hyundai’s Neuville.

There was talk of a privateer team with Middle Eastern financial backing fielding the VW Polo Rs developed for next year’s more exciting rules, but that has gone quiet since Ogier signed with M-Sport.

Mikkelsen had been mentioned as a possibility for such an operation too, but as a teammate to Ogier – and that’s no longer a goer.

In any case, those Polos cannot be homologated unless they run in a registered WRC team.

Game on for all teams
Toyota, returning to the WRC after a 17-year absence with its Yaris in a team headed by Finnish four-time world champion Tommi Makkinen, this week confirmed Latvala, who has the same manager as Makkinen.

It already was committed to its Finnish development driver, Juho Hanninen, and will field a third Finn, newly-crowned WRC2 champion Esapekka Lappi, once it has a third Yaris ready.

Meanwhile, M-Sport chief Malcolm Wilson said Ogier and his co-driver Julien Ingrassia “believe that the Ford Fiesta WRC is the car with which they can best defend their championship”.

The pair won 38 WRC rounds and four consecutive world titles over the past four seasons with VW.

M-Sport has not been an official Ford factory team since 2012 and securing Ogier is a coup for it.

“I’m convinced we have the car for him to take a fifth world championship,” Wilson said.

However, M-Sport’s announcement made no mention of how long Ogier is to drive cars with the blue oval logo, but he had made it known he was only looking for a one-year deal.

“There will be a lot of new things this [next] season, but I am definitely looking forward to it,” Ogier said.

“There’s not long before we line up at the start [of the Monte Carlo Rally] and we’ve not had a lot of seat time with the Ford Fiesta WRC, but we’ll give it our best to be ready.

“We’re aware of the challenges, and I can see how hungry Malcolm Wilson and his team are for success.

“We’ll certainly be aiming to return them to the top step of the podium.”

Ogier will continue to be paid by VW next year and retains his personal sponsorship from Red Bull, which not only is involved in the WRC promotion company but will telecast a lot of WRC activity next year – especially on Saturdays – free on website redbull.tv and the dedicated Red Bull TV app.

Australia’s recently-retired nine-time F1 grand prix winner and 2015 world endurance champion Mark Webber, a Red Bull ambassador, will be the guest host of the energy drink and extreme sports company’s rally programs from the Monte Carlo Rally.

Bottas shaking loose at Williams? Massa back in?
Initially the word from Williams was that it wouldn’t release Valterri Bottas to Mercedes.

Now, though, deputy team principal Claire Williams, daughter of founder and principal Sir Frank, says it would consider letting Bottas go “if an experienced, credible alternative was available”.

Williams has spoken to 35-year-old Felipe Massa about reversing his retirement so that it has an experienced teammate for Lance Stroll in the Canadian’s debut F1 season, starting in Melbourne on March 26.

Nico Rosberg’s shock retirement five days after winning the world title has created problems for Mercedes but also other teams.

Massa is a likeable character but over the hill as an F1 driver. He was outqualified 4-17 by Bottas this year and did not finish in the top 10 in the drivers’ championship, while Bottas was only eighth.

Mercedes protégé Pascal Wehrlein, 22, has appeared to be second favourite to Bottas as Rosberg’s replacement but his form does not warrant a drive in the top team.

The Manor team for which he drove this year, and which finished last of the 11 constructors, may change hands soon and he may not be assured of a seat there or anywhere else without Mercedes’ intervention.

Bottas’ season was somewhat disappointing too, but he has long been a favourite of Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, who has remained part of his management group even after having sold his shareholding in Williams.

Roll of the dice... or driver
Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo is the best qualified to replace Rosberg, although Red Bull is unlikely to be prepared to release him – especially in light of its owner Dietrich Mateschitz’s longstanding enmity for Mercedes.

Spaniard Carlos Sainz Junior, son of a dual world rally champion and with two F1 seasons under his belt at Red Bull’s junior team Toro Rosso, is another who could fit in well at Mercedes – and cope with triple world champion Lewis Hamilton.

Sainz has no prospect of promotion by Red Bull into its senior team while Ricciardo and teenage sensation Max Verstappen remain there, seemingly for at least the next two years.

Sainz is younger than Bottas and with better recent form, so it makes some sense for Red Bull to “sell” him to Mercedes and introduce another youngster at Toro Rosso.

Another excellent option, mentioned here in the immediate wake of Rosberg quitting, would be Mexican Sergio Perez, still only 26 and likely to have a get-out clause in his Force India contract that could easily be exercised.

Wolff is reported to have offered Williams 10 million euros (almost $14.2 million) off the cost of its Mercedes power units next season as a “sweetener” to release Bottas.

That was rejected, but the BBC’s chief F1 writer Andrew Benson has said Wolff may be prepared to drop the entire €17 million powerplant bill next season.

There were reports that Mercedes may want its new driver to be on a one-year contract, which would be appropriate for Wehrlein but would not sit well with Bottas.

A one-year deal would leave open the option of German four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel joining Mercedes after the expiry of his Ferrari contract next year.

Although Vettel would still only be 30, a younger yet experienced driver – a Sainz or Perez, if not Ricciardo – would be a better bet than him or the even older dual world champion Fernando Alonso, already 35 and perhaps eyeing sports car racing after his deal with struggling McLaren-Honda runs out next year.

Hamilton has said he is not greatly fussed who his new teammate is. He said he would have a say once Mercedes told him its short list, but that he had no power of veto.

As one often seen as a source of friction, Hamilton said he did not want a “poisonous” teammate and relations needed to be harmonious “for the team’s morale”.

Meanwhile, F1 commercial chief Bernie Ecclestone can’t see anybody challenging Hamilton next season.

“Nobody would want to buy tickets and go to watch a race or watch on television Lewis disappearing when the lights go off and probably lapping the field a couple of times,” Ecclestone said.

“It would be bad for everybody and bad for Lewis as well, because I think he wants to win fair and wants to beat somebody.”