MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo-Verstappen hunky-dory

Formula 1 is back after its four-week northern summer break and Daniel Ricciardo says the spat with Red Bull Racing teammate Max Verstappen is a long way behind them.

The world championship resumes at Belgium's wonderful Spa-Francorchamps, where Ricciardo won in 2014 and finished second last year in a Mercedes "sandwich" between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.

The Mercedes and Ferraris are likely to be the pacesetters this weekend, but importantly the waters at RBR have been smoothed after the over-enthusiastic, even over-aggressive, Verstappen punted Ricciardo on the first lap of the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest almost a month ago.

So enraged was the usually-so-smiley Ricciardo that he branded Verstappen an "amateur" and said he didn't seem to be able to cope with having a teammate in front of him.

That incident meant carsales.com.au global ambassador Ricciardo went into the mid-season break, during which the team factories were shut for two weeks, just one point ahead of Ferrari's fifth-placed Kimi Raikkonen, although still 50 points ahead of Verstappen.

During the "holiday" Raikkonen's contract at the Italian stable of the black prancing horse has been extended for one more – and surely last – year. Coincidentally, that contract will now expire at the same time as Ricciardo's contract at Red Bull is up. While there will be other drivers Ferrari will look at as a replacement in 2019 for the ageing "Iceman", including Verstappen, the West Australian, 28, has an impeccable CV for a Ferrari seat – outright speed, experience, racecraft, proven winner, massively marketable and with Italian heritage. The only thing perhaps standing in the way could be Sebastian Vettel not wanting Ricciardo as his teammate after the four-time world champion was "dusted" by our Dan in their one season together at RBR in 2014.

Of more immediate importance though is that there is harmony, albeit against a very competitive backdrop, in the Red Bull camp with nine GPs ahead to complete this season.

Ricciardo said being eliminated so early in Hungary by his teammate was "frustration – pure!".

"But after the engineers' meeting [post-race debrief] Max and I spoke one-on-one in private – and that was all I could ask from him," Ricciardo said.

"Sure, he couldn't give me back my points [from a race in which he might well have been on the podium].

"Sure, he could have given me some of his prize money (from finishing fifth).

"I am just kidding.

"He was sincere when we shook hands and I was satisfied with that. It is hard to criticise a driving style for trying too hard. It is natural that you want to make the most out of your situation. It is the right mind set.

"But you've also got to be realistic about what is possible and what is not.

"It [the incident] was maybe a little bit like last year here in Spa: he was starting from the front row but didn't get the best jump and tried to make it up straight away – and that didn't work out. So Budapest was not the first time he's done that.

"Is it a weakness? I don't know if it is a weakness. At the moment it is probably just youth. Last year he was a kid – now I see him [at 19] as a young adult.

"As I said, his apology was all I could ask for and the way we did it was not the kind where his manager was standing next to him or [RBR team principal] Christian [Horner] was between us – it was a one-on-one."

As the season resumes Ricciardo's predecessor at Red Bull, Mark Webber, has described Ricciardo as "the most reliable driver in F1" while criticising Verstappen for what he called a "flaky" approach.

"Max has been a bit flaky ... going off the road a lot on Friday and Saturday, which puts pressure on the mechanics getting the car ready [for Sunday races]," Webber said.

"But he's pushing the limits.

"When it comes to Sundays, he hasn't made many mistakes. It's been [mainly] a lot of high-profile reliability retirements where he's lost a truckload of points, so that's been hard for him to swallow."

But of Ricciardo he said: "Daniel is just so solid on Sunday afternoons. He's the most reliable driver in F1 in that you know what he's going to deliver week-in, week-out.

"He's always got the most out of what they [RBR] have given him and it's hard to see how he could have done much more.

"We all expected such great things from this [RB13] car this year, but it came out the box very poorly. They had a lot of catching up to do.

"With Renault [engines], it's unfortunately a little bit of a broken record, 'we haven't got this, we haven't got that' – it's been going on for five years.

"[RBR] have to make a car a second faster than everyone else, maybe [compensate for the inferior power unit]."

Webber said that Fernando Alonso, the dual world champion whose future at struggling McLaren-Honda or elsewhere may be clarified this weekend, was probably still the best racer in F1, while Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton was the best since the incomparable Ayrton Senna over one lap, especially in qualifying.

Trailing Vettel by 14 points this season, Hamilton will be making his 200th GP start this weekend and could equal Michael Schumacher's 68 pole positions (from 308 GPs; Senna had 61 poles from 162 GPs).

Schumacher, out of public view since a skiing accident almost four years ago, won a record 91 GPs, Hamilton is on 57 victories, Alain Prost won 51, Vettel is on 46, Senna had 41 and Alonso is stuck on 32.

Schumacher won six times at Spa – and it is 25 years since the first of those triumphs.

Instead of the Benetton car he drove that day, which could not be accessed, Schumacher's 18-year-old son Mick, now racing in the European F3 Championship, will do a demonstration at Spa in a Benetton B194 – the model in which his father clinched the first of his record seven world titles in Adelaide in 1994 – on Sunday.

Cost the F1 hurdle too high for VW
It has long been thought that the impediment to the Volkswagen group entering F1 was Bernie Ecclestone, but now that he's largely gone – even though he remains the sport's 'chairman emeritus' – there's still another.

The costs. Volkswagen Group director Bernhard Gobmeier said this week that F1 was "walking a very dangerous path" with the massive "unsustainable" budgets of Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren.

"F1 is completely out of range – and so is the World Endurance Championship [for prototype sports cars]," Gobmeier said.

"The number of sponsors is going down – and so is the spectators' number.

"MotoGP is way better than F1 – 100 times better."

In open-wheeler car racing, VW is now much more committed – via its Audi brand and soon Porsche – to Formula E, the global electric championship, while BMW is stepping up its involvement in that series and Mercedes is preparing to enter it too.

Nico Rosberg, who quit F1 after winning the world title with Mercedes last season, said this week that FE "is the future".

"It will be exciting to see when all those manufacturers put their cards on the table," he said.

Rosberg, who had been hired by the Williams F1 team as an engineer before installing him as a driver, said the type of technology in FE "will change our world completely".

"I'm very interested in how our lives will be simplified by that," he said.

While restating that he would never return to F1, Rosberg said he would be "open to all [other] possibilities".

Land of the long lost rally
It's as good as official now that New Zealand won't be back on the World Rally Championship calendar next year.

While the 2018 calendar won't be announced until next month, WRC promoter Oliver Ciesla said this week that the cost of staging a NZ round was too expensive for the teams and organisers.

Ciesla praised the passion of the Kiwis but said "the economics for a very big event are just not coming".

Rally Australia seemingly will retain its place as the season finale, with Turkey expected to make a return, in place of Poland where there has been trouble with spectators too often.

Turkey has been part of the WRC six times, but not since 2010. Croatia was thought to have been vying with New Zealand for a place on the calendar next year, but it too looks likely to miss out.

This year's Rally Australia at Coffs Harbour is now less than three months away on November 16-19, with four drivers mathematical chances of winning the world title.

Frenchman Sebastian Ogier (M-Sport Ford Fiesta), the champion the past four years with Volkswagen, is 17 points ahead of Belgian Thierry Neuville (Hyundai i20). The others in contention are Estonian Ott Tanak (M-Sport Ford Fiesta) and Finland's Jari-Matti Latvala (Toyota Yaris), although the latter will need to win in Spain and Britain to still be in the fight at Rally Oz.

McRae gets drive in World RX
Australia will have a foot in both of the world's major rallycross "camps" soon.

While Chris Atkinson has been driving a Subaru all season in America's 'Global Rallycross Championship', adopted Aussie Alister McRae – a Scotsman based in Perth – is to join the World Rallycross Championship from the first weekend of September.

McRae, brother of late WRC 1995 world champion Colin, is to race a 600-horsepower Volkswagen Polo 'Supercar' from the French round of the World RX at Loheac, with three more rounds in Latvia, Germany and the new location for the finale, Cape Town in South Africa.

McRae made 75 WRC starts, the last of them in New Zealand in 2012. He also won the 2011 Asia-Pacific Rally Championship, has competed a lot in China, participated in the Dakar Rally and two years ago was part of Global Rallycross Australia, which collapsed after just one round. (A cheaper Australian series has begun this year).

McRae has replaced Englishman Guy Wilks in the LOCO Energy team in World RX.

"It is going to be one big learning curve," McRae said.

"World RX is amazingly competitive, so it's going to be a baptism of fire."

Bourdais back from big one at Brickyard
Sebastien Bourdais, the two-time Gold Coast Indy winner, is back in IndyCar racing in the US this weekend much sooner than almost anyone expected.

Bourdais suffered multiple fractures to his pelvis and right hip in a huge crash during qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 in May, hitting the wall at The Brickyard with an impact of 118G.

It was initially thought the Frenchman – a four-time Champ Car champion before the reunification of American open-wheeler racing – would not race again this year, or at best at the season finale at Sonoma in California in mid-September.

However, he has been cleared to drive for Dale Coyne Racing at this weekend's round at Gateway Motorsports Park in Illinois, then Watkins Glen in New York State and at Sonoma.

Mexican ex-F1 driver Esteban Gutierrez has been the regular substitute for Bourdais, although Australia's James Davison filled the Coyne seat at the Indy 500.

Australia's Will Power is fifth, 42 points off the lead, as he chases a repeat of his 2014 IndyCar title with the mighty Team Penske after last weekend's victory at Pocono in Pennsylvania.

Power's rivals for the title are three fellow Penske drivers – American Josef Newgarden, Brazilian Helio Castroneves and Frenchman Simon Pagenaud – and New Zealander Scott Dixon, driving for Chip Ganassi Racing.