MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo can be champion – Prost

‘The Professor’ Alain Prost, the Formula 1 driver some regard as the best of all time, says Daniel Ricciardo can become world champion.

At Renault … but not this year. Or next.

Four-time world champion Prost – and it would have been five-time if not for a scoring system that counted against him in 1984 – was part of the management talks last year that identified Ricciardo as the driver the French manufacturer most wanted to sign.

“He was No.1 on the list, absolutely,” Prost told carsales.com.au at a Renault function last night ahead of the season-opening Australian GP.

Renault was surprised to secure Ricciardo’s signature and today sets about trying to return to its world title glories as a full constructor (rather than just engine supplier) with Fernando Alonso more than a decade ago.

Prost, who scored the first nine of his 51 GP victories with Renault in the early 1980s before championship successes with McLaren and Williams (and a stint at Ferrari in between), is now 64 and an adviser to Renault.

After the death of his great rival Ayrton Senna and with Michael Schumacher out of public view since his skiing accident five years ago, Prost – renowned for his precise, calculating driving style – is the most successful of the past greats seen around F1 nowdays.

He said Ricciardo would be happier at Renault than he had been in his last season at Red Bull Racing – where he won seven GPs in five years, including two early last season – and that “he can be world champion”.

But, if that is to be with Renault, it will require the carsales.com.au global ambassador staying beyond the two-year contract he’s on.

Prost agrees with the timeframe the manufacturer has given itself – to narrow the gap to top teams Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull this year, to start scoring podiums next year and winning races in 2021.

And then it has to win enough races to be the constructors’ world champion and have one of its drivers be the individual champion.

Team principal Cyril Abiteboul said Ricciardo and German teammate Nico Hulkenberg together could be the spark to ignite Renault’s revival.

And Prost, who will be mentoring the pair as and when required, said he would be very interested in the dynamic between the pair.

“We rate Nico highly too. He does not have any podiums [in almost 160 GP starts, because he hasn’t had the machinery], but we know he is better than that,” Prost said.

“It’s going to be a tough fight [between Ricciardo and Hulkenberg].

“Daniel is very important for the team. He’s always the same person, which is nice.

“He will be a big help for us.

“We know we can’t win the championship this year, but we have big improvement with the engine [which has lagged the Mercedes and Ferrari power units and also has to compete with the Honda now used by Red Bull].

“And we have some big developments to come during the year.”

Abiteboul, who bore the brunt of Red Bull’s criticism of its power unit in the first five years of the V6 hybrids, was in a jovial mood on the eve of the season.

“We’re on the case. We’re French. We take a bit of time,” he said.

And Ricciardo, knowing that his next win may be quite a while away, vowed to keep firing ‘missiles’ in the meantime with his trademark overtaking.

The season begins with two 90-minute practice sessions at the Albert Park circuit today, from noon and 4:00pm, with a one-hour session from 2:00pm tomorrow (Saturday), then qualifying at 5:00pm, and Sunday’s 58-lap race starts at 4.10pm.

Australian Michael Masi suddenly finds himself the F1 race director after yesterday’s sudden death of long-serving Charlie Whiting.

Deputy race director of the Supercars championship to Tim Schenken until the end of last season, Masi, 39, had been appointed race director for European-based Formula 2 and Formula 3 this year.

Masi worked as Whiting’s deputy at some GPs last year and was being groomed as the 66-year-old’s successor.

He has also been an F1 steward at times and was the chairman of the stewards at last weekend’s Hong Kong ePrix – a round of the Formula E electric open-wheeler championship.

At this stage Masi has only been confirmed as the F1 race director for the Australian GP, but – all going well – he’s likely to continue in the role, which also involves being the top safety official and the race starter.

British American Tobacco has followed Philip Morris and withdrawn its new non-tobacco branding from F1 – but only for this weekend.

The McLaren cars had been unveiled with BAT’s ‘A Better Tomorrow’ signage, which was said to be focused on BAT’s “potentially reduced-risk products” – the Vype, Vuse and glo brands.

However, BAT and Philip Morris, which had been going to display the ‘Mission Winnow’ livery for its similar campaign on the Ferraris, have averted a fight with Australian health authorities by backing off.

Both intend to display the liveries at the second GP of the season, in Bahrain on March 31, while the SportBusiness Sponsorship website reports that European Union health authorities “remain concerned that both Mission Winnow and A Better Tomorrow could be in breach of EU laws against tobacco advertising”, which long ago banned cigarette promotion in F1.

The site quotes EU health and food safety spokesman Anca Paduraru saying that both campaigns require “further close examination”.