MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo looking up, F1 looking ahead

Daniel Ricciardo is confident of his Red Bull car being more competitive with Mercedes and Ferrari in this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix than in Melbourne's Formula 1 season-opener a fortnight ago.

The second round of the world championship coincides with the 50th anniversary of the death one of the sport's greatest drivers, Scotsman Jim Clark, a dual world champion killed in what otherwise would have been an obscure Formula 2 race at Germany's Hockenheim circuit. In his time, Clark was the one driver mentioned in the same breath as Fangio.

But Bahrain will be more about the future than the past. Liberty Media, which has owned F1 for a little more than a year now, will outline its vision on technical regulations for cars and how it intends to control the sport's astronomical costs and share its revenues more equitably among the teams.

Whatever Liberty's motorsports supremo Ross Brawn outlines is guaranteed to spark a bunfight, as dominant teams Mercedes and, more particularly, Ferrari can only be losers from the change.

And Liberty's hands are pretty much tied on improving 'the show' for fans in the next three years.

Brawn acknowledges that the lack of overtaking – only five passes in Melbourne after the opening lap and the decisive change in the lead coming as an upshot of pitstop strategies – is a major problem. However, it's almost impossible – because of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile's ultimate power – for there to be any major change to the technical regs before 2021.

As if the lack of F1's traditionally visceral sound since the introduction of the 1.6-litre V6 hybrids in 2014 hasn't been offensive enough to its purest fans, the widening of the tyres and the cars overall at the start of last season has further diminished opportunities for passing.

Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes couldn't overtake Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari in the Australian GP, Ricciardo couldn't get his Red Bull past Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari, while Ricciardo's teammate Max Verstappen was stuck behind Fernando Alonso's McLaren now with the same Renault power unit as the Red Bulls.

Verstappen described the race as "completely worthless" to fans viewing it. "I would have turned off the TV. Very boring," he said.

"Even if you are 1.5 seconds faster [than the car in front], it's still not possible to overtake."

Brawn has said: "For 2021 we want to have cars that allow drivers to really fight one another on track."

But can fans, with so many other sporting and entertainment alternatives, wait until 2021 for better racing?

Ricciardo, the carsales.com.au global ambassador, is adamant that F1 needs "raceability – because that's the spectacle".

"A lot of money's invested [by road-car manufacturers and F1 teams] ... and it's not really for much reason," Ricciardo said.

"With some of the stuff the automotive industry can learn a little bit, but there's a lot of money wasted in how technical it all is – and it doesn't sound good."

The Bahrain race will start at the horror time of 1.10am Monday, Australian eastern, and Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says the Sakhir circuit on the Middle Eastern desert island provides more opportunities for overtaking than Melbourne.

Ricciardo reckons the Red Bulls can be "very close" to the Mercs and Ferraris.

But he knows that he and Verstappen's Renault power units won't have the 'party mode' that Hamilton and Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas and Ferrari's Vettel and Raikkonen have for qualifying and therefore may have to start behind them again.

Ricciardo set the fastest race lap in Melbourne on his way to fourth place, from eighth on the grid after a three-place grid penalty.

"In clear air we were very, very strong," Ricciardo said.

"If we have the same car on Sunday [in Bahrain] that we had in Melbourne on the Sunday then I think we will be very close.

"For qualifying we need to find something, but in the race we are a bit easier on the tyres [than other teams]."

Vettel won for Ferrari in Bahrain last year and this will be his 200th GP start. It will also be once-so-mighty McLaren's 100th race since it last won and Hamilton's 100th race with Mercedes. He will be the first driver to chalk up the 'ton' with two teams, and he has won world titles with both – at McLaren in 2008 and Mercedes in 2014, '15 and '17.

Already with five more pole positions than Michael Schumacher's 68, Hamilton could surpass another record he shares with F1's most successful driver (still out of public view more than four years after his skiing accident) of 40 victories from pole position.

While little else is likely to change in F1 in a hurry, grid girls will be back at the Monaco GP in May.

Liberty Media has succumbed to the demands of the Automobile Club of Monaco, although it will be the new 'grid kids' rather than the girls holding the boards with the driver numbers.

Russia too wants girls on its Sochi grid at the end of September. Deputy prime minister Dmitry Kozak, who heads Russia's GP organising committee, says it is "wrong" for children to be on the track.

"It should be adults," Kozak said. "We plan to reinstate the tradition. After all, our girls are the most beautiful."