MOTORSPORT: Red Bull plays F1 long game

Daniel Ricciardo is optimistic about next weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, but his Red Bull bosses are looking much further ahead.

Ricciardo has predicted that Singapore’s street circuit, where the performance disadvantage of Red Bull’s Renault power unit won’t be the big factor it was in Italy and Belgium, “will bring our car to life”.

“I don’t want to get too excited, but we can go there with some confidence,” Ricciardo said.
“The car has got better and better in the last few races.

“Hopefully we can challenge Ferrari for a podium [behind the Mercedes factory team cars].

“The chassis I’m really pleased with … it’s handling well.”

But Red Bull energy drink tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz, his motorsport adviser Helmut Marko, RBR team principal Christian Horner and aerodynamics genius Adrian Newey are looking at a much bigger picture.

Forget occasional mutterings about Red Bull pulling out of F1. It is contracted, under the Concorde Agreement, to remain in the sport until at least 2020.

It wants out of its deal to use Renault power until the end of next year, and the French company appears agreeable to that. The terms of that split might be settled in Singapore. RBR and its junior team Toro Rosso are likely to switch to Ferrari power units next year, but Marko has told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport that is only “a temporary solution”.

That publication, whose F1 correspondent Michael Schmidt is the best-informed in the GP paddock, has quoted Marko as saying the anticipated Ferrari deal for next year was “a first step in order to regain a competitive engine”.

It mentioned that Red Bull was contemplating working with British company Illmor, Austria’s AVL or a Volkswagen group brand on a longer-term engine project – and that it may be prepared to finance some of the development costs.

All of that obviously will depend on engine rules, including whether F1 sticks with the V6 hybrids that are hugely expensive and unpopular with many in and watching the sport.

Red Bull already has had Illmor chief Mario Illien consulting directly to it this year on ways to improve the Renault units that are uncompetitive against those of Mercedes and Ferrari.

Illmor describes itself as “the world leader in the independent production of racing engines” and “able to turn our hand to any customer engine project”.

AVL, or Anstalt fur Verbrennungskraftmaschinen List and described as “the largest privately-owned company for the development of powertrain systems with internal combustion engines (ICEs)”, boasts that it has had “years of working hand-in-hand with the best racing teams in the world” and was involved in the winning of 13 world championships last year.

Audi is the most obvious VW brand for Red Bull to tie up with as it has dominated the Le Mans 24-Hour sports car race in France this century, most recently with hybrids – although VW stablemate Porsche beat it there this year and again in the most recent World Endurance Championship round at Germany’s Nurburgring.

In the meantime, RBR is considering not even using Renault upgrades that were anticipated by the Russian GP on the second weekend of October but are now unlikely to arrive before the United States GP two weeks later anyway.

RBR, already on its seventh Renault engines in Ricciardo and teammate Daniil Kyvat’s RB11 cars, is weighing whether any improvements can offset more grid penalties the further it goes beyond four power units each for the season.

Renault also may be reluctant to deliver the upgrades once its “marriage” to RBR starts to officially dissolve.

Ricciardo said that he “won’t be too optimistic” about extra horsepower from Renault.
“Until I feel more horsepower I won’t get too excited,” he said.

However, he said that F1’s new start procedures, which have put more reliance on the driver and lessened the input of the crews on the pit wall, had helped him.

“Both my starts [at Spa in Belgium and Monza in Italy since the changes] have been pretty awesome,” he said.

British publication Autosport’s GP editor Ben Anderson rated Ricciardo’s drive last Sunday from the back of the Monza grid to eighth place at the chequered flag the best of the Italian GP, giving the Australian a perfect 10 rating compared with nine for winner Lewis Hamilton and eight for the other two on the podium – Sebastian Vettel and Felipe Massa.

“This was Ricciardo at his best: relentless and error-free,” Anderson wrote. “He copped a 50-place grid penalty (even though there are only 20 cars in the field) for two engine changes, and lost valuable track time to a hydraulic problem on Friday and engine failure on Saturday. He was faster than Kyvat with only one flying lap in Q1 (the first of the three segments of qualifying) before sitting out the rest of the session, then put in a mighty charge to eighth starting from the back row, including an opportunistic pass of Marcus Ericsson’s Sauber on the run to the line.”

Ricciardo says safety must come before tradition
Ricciardo is the latest prominent driver to back the idea of canopies for open-wheeler cars following the recent deaths of Justin Wilson and Jules Bianchi and those of Dan Wheldon and Henry Surtees in recent years.

Hot on the heels of Mark Webber, Ricciardo said the tradition of open-top cockpits needed to be abandoned as soon as possible in the name of greater safety.

The governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) is to study two new head-protection designs above cockpits this month after having earlier ruled out a jet fighter-style concept.

“It is something I want to definitely go for – for me it is the last piece of the puzzle,” Ricciardo said.

“The helmets have come on a long way, but unfortunately we have still seen some tragic accidents and you get to a point where you don’t care about tradition any more.

“I don’t care if the statistics say there have only been a few (deaths) in the last 20 years. Statistics cannot predict what is going to happen in the future, so now we need to ignore tradition and go for safety.

“As a current driver, and seeing these things happen around you in F1 and IndyCar, it hits home a lot more and you just don’t care how the past has been with tradition.

“It is silly not to look into options now for sure.”

Wilson beat Webber to the 2001 Formula 3000 title in Europe and was his Jaguar teammate in F1 for part of 2003 before his switch to American open-wheeler racing.

“I had a very, very good relationship with him,” Webber said.

“It was an honour to do that (be a pallbearer) for the family because we are a family in many ways when it comes to motorsport.

“From a racing side he was super accurate and very ‘sniper-like’ with his passing moves.

“It was very, very rare that he would make mistakes and I really enjoyed racing against him.

“We know the dangers are always there. Motorsport has had good and bad patches when it comes to these tragic events and when it is really close to home then it hits you even harder.

“You think of the family and everyone who is going to be affected by this.

“Motorsport is a tight-knit family and when we need to get together in really tough times we do our best.”

Retired Scottish IndyCar ace Dario Franchitti was another pallbearer at the funeral in Northamptonshire, while Sir Jackie Stewart and Christian Horner were among the 500 mourners.

Jonathan Palmer, another ex-F1 driver who guided Wilson’s path to the top levels of racing, said he had been “the innocent victim in a cruel twist of fate” when hit by flying debris in an IndyCar race at Pocono, Pennsylvania, last month.

“It still feels like a bad dream, but tragically it is only too real,” Palmer said.

“[But] Justin died doing something he loved. He wasn’t in denial about the risks.”

Alexander Rossi, the 23-year-old Californian who is running second in this year’s GP2 series to Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne, has been the most likely American prospect but has been told by the team owner, tools tycoon Gene Haas, that he won’t get a seat.

Haas, who also co-owns a NASCAR team with triple Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart, said he did not want a rookie driver for his F1 debut season.

“One we want with real experience, one who has been though a few years in F1,” Haas said.

As part of the new team’s close ties with Ferrari, including a supply of power units and other assistance, one if not both of the Haas drivers will come through Ferrari.

Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne, who was Daniel Ricciardo’s teammate at Toro Rosso in 2012-13, is Ferarri’s test driver, and Mexican Esteban Gutierrez, who had two years in F1 with Sauber and also has Ferrari connections, are the frontrunners for the two seats.

Romain Grosjean, the French driver at Lotus, is another mentioned as a possibility for Haas, depending on how Renault’s expected buyback of the Lotus team unfolds.

Kevin Magnussen, the Dane who has been McLaren’s reserve this year after racing for that team last season, is another contender.

Hall of Fame to get 30 for starters
The Australian Motor Sport Hall of Fame initially will have about 30 members.

The first inductions will be at a dinner on April 1 next year – the Friday night before the F1 season-opening Australian Grand Prix that weekend.

The Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, Motorcycling Australia, Karting Australia, the Australian National Drag Racing Association, Speedway Australia, the Australian Grand Prix Corporation and V8 Supercars are involved in the establishment of the Hall of Fame.

Switzerland back on motor racing map?
Motor racing may return to Switzerland - 60 years after it was outlawed.

The second season of the Formula E electric open-wheelers is expected to have a round added at Lugano next May.

Switzerland banned motor racing after a Mercedes-Benz crashed into a grandstand at Le Mans in France in 1955, killing French driver Pierre Lavegh and 83 spectators.

Earlier this year Swiss IndyCar driver Simona de Silvestro – who will race at Bathurst next month – demonstrated a Formula E car in Geneva.

Next month’s opening round of the Formula E championship in Beijing has been moved back a week to October 24 because of a clash with another event in the Chinese capital’s Olympic Park.

Both of Roger Penske’s Sprint Cup stars, Joey Logano and 2012 champion Brad Keselowski, already are locked in, driving Fords.

Logano has won three races this season and Keselowski one.

The other nine drivers assured of a place in The Chase are Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch, both with four victories this year, Matt Kenseth with three, reigning champion Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Junior, Kurt Busch and Carl Edwards each with two wins, and Martin Truex Junior and Denny Hamlin with one.

The drivers best placed to claim the other five places without having won a race this season are Jamie McMurray, Ryan Newman, Paul Menard, retiring four-time champion Jeff Gordon and Clint Bowyer, who is being tipped to join Richard Petty Motorsports – Marcos Ambrose’s last NASCAR team – next season after Michael Waltrip Racing folds.