MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo pays price for entertainment

Daniel Ricciardo provided the only excitement of the French Grand Prix but post-race penalties left him without any world championship points from the race, in which Mercedes extended its unbeaten streak.

Ricciardo was given two five-second penalties and three demerit points on his F1 licence after the chequered flag at the Circuit Paul Ricard relating to his passing of McLaren’s Lando Norris and Alfa Romeo Sauber’s Kimi Raikkonen on the last lap.

That dropped the carsales.com.au global ambassador from seventh to 11th in the race classification and leaves the Renault factory team eight points behind McLaren, which is using the same power units.

“No regrets. I tried. Would rather that than sit back without a heart. Hope everyone was entertained,” Ricciardo said.

“It’s clearly disappointing to drop outside the points with a post-race penalty, especially at the team’s home race.

“[But] the last lap was a lot of fun. We had a fight and I enjoyed it.

“The last few laps really came alive. It all got pretty exciting.

“It’s a shame to be penalised, but I will move on.

“There are still a lot of positives to take and we will be looking for an immediate response in Austria [next weekend].”

A lap down again anyway, Ricciardo was adjudged by the race stewards to have returned to the track unsafely after running wide when overtaking Norris and then to have gained an unfair advantage in his move on Raikkonen, who had snuck past him just seconds before.

Those decisions came two days after the review Ferrari sought of the five-second penalty that denied Sebastian Vettel victory over Lewis Hamilton in Montreal two weeks earlier was rejected for lack of fresh evidence.

Renault is unlikely to quibble over the penalties on Ricciardo, who said he was still not as comfortable with his RS19 car – especially its braking – as he had been with the Red Bulls of the previous five seasons in which he won seven GPs.

Lewis Hamilton’s victory in France was his fourth in a row, his sixth of the season, the 10th straight for Mercedes (including the last two GPs of last season), its sixth one-two this year and its 50th in F1 history.

Hamilton is now only 12 wins behind Michael Schumacher’s record 91 and 36 points clear of teammate Valtteri Bottas as he charges towards his sixth world title.

Yet it was the worst GP of the season, with Hamilton 18 seconds clear of Bottas, who had something broken in his cockpit, and Ferrari youngster Charles Leclerc close behind at the end, with Max Verstappen’s Red Bull-Honda almost another 16 seconds back.

The first four finishers had qualified in that order but Hamilton said drivers shouldn’t be blamed for dud show, but rather “many, many years” of “bad decisions”, dating back to the days when Bernie Ecclestone ran the sport before the Liberty Media takeover,

Hamilton claimed to “have faith it’s going to get better” after attending a recent meeting on the rules for 2021 and beyond, although the participating manufacturers are likely to ensure little change to the existing V6 hybrids.

Sebastian Vettel improved from seventh on the grid to finish fifth in France but said Ferrari had failed in its main aim of narrowing the gap to Mercedes as much as possible.

Without a win in the past 16 GPs, Vettel’s increasing frustration with F1 – now labelling many of the sport’s tracks “car parks with lines and curbs” – suggests he will bow out at the end of next season, if not sooner.

Ricciardo’s teammate, Nico Hulkenberg, crossed the finish line ninth at Paul Ricard but was promoted one place by the penalties on the Australian and they are equal ninth in the driver standings with 16 points apiece.

However, talk is gathering pace of Mercedes ‘refugee’ Esteban Ocon replacing Hulkenberg at Renault next season.

McLaren had both its drivers, Carlos Sainz Junior and Norris, in the points for the second straight race, and clearly has a better chassis than Renault.

Will Power has had his best finish of the IndyCar season, second to Alex Rossi at Road America – but the Australian was almost half a minute behind the American at the chequered flag.

Power finished ahead of Penske-Chevrolet teammate and series leader Josef Newgarden, but neither could understand how Rossi had been so dominant in his Honda-powered Andretti Autosport Dallara.

“I never saw him all day,” Power said.

“My car didn’t feel bad, it had reasonable balance, and I guess if Alex wasn’t in the race I would have had a good car.

“But it’s hard to say you had a good car when you get beat like that.

“For someone to win in IndyCar with that kind of advantage … that’s rare.

“We’re trying to understand how we can come back.”

Power, the 2014 series champion, has gained a place to fifth, with Rossi now only seven points behind Newgarden, and Penske’s Indianapolis 500 winner a month ago, Simon Pagenaud, and Chip Ganassi’s five-time champion New Zealander Scott Dixon also ahead of the Aussie.

The 11th of the 17 races in the series is on the streets of Toronto, Canada, on July 14.

Jean-Eric Vergne, once Daniel Ricciardo’s F1 teammate, is closer to retaining his Formula E electric open-wheeler title after his third win of the season in Bern, Switzerland.

Vergne, who drives for Chinese team DS Techeetah, is 32 points clear of Brazilian Lucas di Grassi (Audi) with New Zealander Mitch Evans (Jaguar) another 11 points back in third with only the double-header in New York on July 13-14 to go.

Vergne, Evans, Switzerland’s Sebastien Buemi (Nissan) finished in a cluster as rain fell at the end of the Bern race.

Audi has won the 24-hour race at Germany’s Nurburging Nordschleife for the fifth time, after a 5½-minute penalty on the Porsche that had been leading for “not respecting speed limit during flag signals” in the final quarter of the race.

Laurens Vanthoor was clocked at 172kmh in the Porsche 911 GT3-R in a 120kmh zone and ignoring double yellow flags.

The victorious Audi R8 LMS GT3 was driven by Dries Vanthoor, Pierre Kaffer, Frank Stippler and Frederic Vervisch.

It was a horror race for BMW, with five of its six M6 GT3s out before half distance.

Tasmanian Josh Burdon escaped without serious injury when his Nissan GT-R Nismo crashed into a barrier after being rammed from behind by a Porsche Cayman.

The Porsche that Queenslander Matt Campbell shared was second until a puncture forced him to limp to the pits, dropping to fifth. It also hit a barrier on the outside of a sweeping corner and later stopped on track and had to be pushed behind the fence.

Canberra’s Harry Bates continues to dominate the Australian Rally Championship for Toyota, having won all six heats at the three rounds so far.

The Yaris AP4 of Bates and co-driver John McCarthy was fastest on 16 of the 17 stages at the weekend’s Rally Tasmania in and around Launceston.

Molly Taylor and Malcolm Read in a Subaru WRX STI took the final stage win – by less than a second.

They were runners-up to Bates and McCarthy on day one but third on Sunday, behind the other Yaris AP4 driven by Lewis Bates and Anthony McLoughlin, after incurring damage during the morning.

Returning four-time national champion Simon Evans in another Subaru WRX STi was seventh on Saturday after gearbox problems and fourth on Sunday after a penalty for using one more tyre than allowed.

The next ARC round is the Eureka Rush in Victoria’s Goldfields region near Ballarat on August 24-25.