MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo snookered at Red Bull

Daniel Ricciardo’s big promotions the past two years – into Red Bull Racing and now as its senior driver – have left him in the wrong place to try to win a Formula One world championship.

Mercedes has become even more dominant, with a quinella on virtual cruise control in this season’s opening race in Melbourne yesterday, while Ferrari is on the rise again, enabling Sebastian Vettel to score a podium in his debut with the Italian team.

It was the dullest grand prix in 20 years of F1 in the Victorian capital. Not only has the 'show' lost its traditional sound, there is next to no overtaking now either.

Yesterday’s was the race of attrition that had been anticipated last year with the introduction of hybrid V6 turbocharged engines.

Only 15 of the 20 cars that came to Australia this time made the start. After the team’s spell in financial administration, the two Manor Marussias didn’t get on the track in three days without the software to fire their Ferrari engines.

A McLaren-Honda and the second Red Bull-Renault failed on the formation lap, while one Williams-Mercedes couldn’t be raced because of driver Valtteri Bottas’ back injury.

Only 11 cars finished, with the McLaren-Honda of Jenson Button two laps down in 11th and the only one not to score a world championship point.

Ricciardo’s talent could not coax any more than sixth place from his Red Bull RB11, humiliatingly a lap down too. Had Bottas raced, Ricciardo may well have been seventh as forecast here last week.

The Red Bull RB10 was the second best F1 car of 2014, allowing Ricciardo to win three GPs.

Its 2015 car was the fifth best of nine makes that raced at Albert Park – behind the Mercedes W06, Ferrari SF15-T, Williams FW37 and even the neat Ferrari-engined Sauber C34 in which 22-year-old Brazilian rookie Felipe Nasr was the star of the day in fifth place and Swede Marcus Ericsson eighth.

That gave the Swiss team 14 points after hits horrible drought – zero points in all of 2014 – and a week of fending off wannabe Dutch driver Giedo van der Garde in the Victorian Supreme Court, a battle which could yet be resumed in coming days.

Lotus, with Mercedes power now rather than Renault, may even have a better car in its E23 than Red Bull when it gets more of a chance to show it than in yesterday’s early exits.

Red Bull and its junior team Toro Rosso – for which rookies Carlos Sainz, 20, and Max Verstappen, the youngest debutant in F1 history at 17, excelled – are the only two left with Renault, a power unit RBR team principal Christian Horner says is now 100hp down on Mercedes rather than the 60 of last year.

Before long the team which won four straight world championships in 2010-13 might be looking for a new engine supplier – perhaps Volkswagen, whose Audi brand already has conquered the Le Mans sports car classic with its hybrid technology.

Dr Helmut Marko, the powerful motorsport consultant to Red Bull energy drink tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz, is even threatening that the company might quit F1, claiming the hybrid rules are “castrating” its design genius Adrian Newey and “will kill the sport”.

Newey, who is so disillusioned that he’s spending a lot of his time designing an America’s Cup yacht instead, says it could be years before Red Bull is competitive again.

“It’s one thing being in the position where you’re not competitive but you can see your way out of it. It’s another thing when you’re not competitive and your partner doesn’t seem to be willing to engage,” Newey said.

That paints a bleak outlook for Ricciardo, who is locked in at RBR for the foreseeable future.

Horner continues to try to pressure Renault to raise its game, but this is a marriage clearly foundering. The French company may end up reverting to running its own team, if it hangs around in F1 at all.

Horner rebuked Renault because Ricciardo and Daniil Kyvat, whose gearbox failed on the way to the grid, have found the RB11 “quite undriveable” because of its inconsistent power delivery.

“Ferrari have made a good step [from last year]. Renault, at this stage, appear to have made a retrograde step,” Horner said.

“They’re in a bit of a mess at the moment.”

Horner made noises about F1 authorities needing to look at equalizing the competition, but his Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff accused him of moaning.

Ricciardo, who had used up one of the four engines he’s allowed this season even before the Melbourne race began, was too polite to bag Renault too loudly in public.

He reckoned just finishing yesterday was a positive.

“We’re definitely behind … we’ve got to try and make the best of it,” Ricciardo said.

“I’m sure we’ll get there, but it will be a little while.

“I feel a bit for the fans. It was a boring race.”

Vettel, who clearly has made the right move by jumping from RBR where he won four titles to a Ferrari that is leaving no stone unturned in trying to regain its former glory, said the gap behind Mercedes was “just so big” at the moment.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were both more than half a minute ahead of Vettel at the chequered flag yesterday – and it could have been much more.

It looked as though Hamilton had been authorised to win because he had been so dominant in qualifying – 0.6 seconds ahead of Rosberg’s identical car – and that Mercedes did not want to over-emphasise its superiority so soon in the season.

Ford, incidentally, dominated the V8 Supercar races at the GP, with Mark Winterbottom winning all four in an FG X Falcon and teammate Chaz Mostert next best. But there’s no guarantee of a continuation of that when the national championship resumes, for points, at Tasmania’s Symmons Plains in a fortnight.  

But Mercedes’ rivals in F1 have more catching up to do than Ford’s in the V8s.

Like Ricciardo, Jenson Button was relieved to get to the finish, albeit two laps down in a car that was 20kmh shy of Ericsson’s Sauber on the pit straight, in the return of the once-mighty Honda to F1 with the also once-great McLaren.

Fernando Alonso, who didn’t get to Melbourne to drive the other McLaren-Honda MP4-30, might take his place in Malaysia in two weeks, but there will be even less for him to look forward to in the immediate future than for Ricciardo.

Formula One drivers’ championship after first of 20 rounds – 1. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes 25 points; 2. Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 18; 3. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Ferrari) 15; 4. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 12; 5. Felipe Nasr (Brazil, Sauber-Ferrari) 10; 6. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull-Renault 8; 7. Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 6; 8. Marcus Ericsson (Sweden, Sauber-Ferrari) 4; 9.  Carlos Sainz Junior (Spain, Toro Rosso-Renault) 2; 10. Sergio Perez (Mexico, Force India-Mercedes) 1.

F1 constructors’ championship – 1. Mercedes 43; 2. Ferrari 15; 3. Sauber-Ferrari 14; 4. Williams-Mercedes 12; 5. Red Bull-Renault 8; 6. Force India-Mercedes 7; 7. Toro Rosso-Renault 2.