MOTORSPORT: Ricciardo's Renault on 'pole position'

Although Daniel Ricciardo knows his next two Formula 1 seasons at Renault will be an uphill battle, he has a head start in at least one sense - the car he will race this year will be the first of the new models released.

The French manufacturer will launch its RS19 at its factory team's British base at Estone in Oxfordshire on Tuesday, February 12.

Ricciardo joins Renault after five seasons - and seven Grand Prix victories - at Red Bull Racing.

RBR has dropped Renault as the supplier of its V6 hybrid power units in favour of the Honda power already used by its secondary team, Toro Rosso.

Ricciardo joins German driver Nico Hulkenberg at the Renault team knowing that it may take all of his two-year contract - and perhaps longer - for it to become fully competitive with Mercedes, Ferrari and probably still Red Bull, where French youngster Pierre Gasly has replaced him as Max Verstappen's teammate.

The second of the new F1 cars to be unveiled will be by the Racing Point team - formerly Force India and long ago Jordan. That launch will be in Canada at Toronto, centre of the business empire of Lawrence Stroll, the team's new primary owner and father of driver Lance Stroll, previously with the Williams team.

McLaren will follow on February 14 and Ferrari the next day. Mercedes, reported to have had a setback in the design of its 2019 hybrid, has not announced its launch date, but the first of two four-day tests for all 10 teams in Barcelona starts on February 18.

Testing will conclude on March 1, with the season-opening GP in Melbourne on March 14-17.

Some big changes this week in the management of F1's historically - but not lately - two most successful teams, Ferrari and McLaren.

Ferrari has tipped out former Philip Morris marketing executive Maurizio Arrivabene after a little more than three seasons as team principal, promoting technical director Mattia Binotto into the role.

It is yet to name a replacement technical chief for Binotto, a Swiss-Italian who has been at Ferrari since 1995.

McLaren has appointed German Andreas Seidl from Porsche as its managing director, answering to American Zak Brown.

Seidl oversaw Porsche's hat-trick of victories in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the World Endurance Championship driver and constructor titles in 2015-2017.

McLaren has not won a GP since Jenson Button took the chequered flag first in Brazil in November 2012.

Acclaimed designer James Key is to join McLaren during this season.

Ferrari's cars have been race winners and close to ending Mercedes' championship dominance the past two years but the Italian stable's internal tensions and strategy and driver errors have cost it against the might of the three-pointed star and Lewis Hamilton - and Arrivabene has paid the price.

Binotto, Ferrari's fifth team principal in four years, has the task of getting the prancing horse back on top after no constructors' title since 2008 and no drivers' title since Kimi Raikkonen's in 2007.

Veteran Raikkonen goes back to his roots at Ferrari-powered Sauber this year, with young Monaco star Charles Leclerc promoted from there to be Sebastien Vettel's Ferrari teammate.

Although shorter - "only" 5000 kilometres, but still two weeks - and all in one country this year, the Dakar Rally in Peru is proving tougher than ever.

Defending victor Carlos Sainz (X-Raid Mini) and another former winner, South African Giniel de Villiers (Toyota Hilux) were out of contention after just three days. Sebastien Loeb, the most successful World Rally

Championship driver in history, too probably after losing more than 40 minutes on the third day of the event predominantly over sand dunes in his fourth Dakar, this time in a privateer Peugeot DKR 3000.

That has left the car section looking like a battle between 'Monsieur Dakar' Stephane Peterhansel (X-Raid Mini), chasing his eighth victory on four wheels after six on motorcycles, and Qatar's two-time victor and sand dune specialist Nasser Al-Attiyah (Toyota).

They and Loeb each won a stage over the first three days, with Al-Attiyah about seven minutes ahead of Frenchman Peterhansel overall with many more challenges to come at high altitude.

Australians Steve Riley and Trevor Hanks have been experiencing all the trials and tribulations of the Dakar in their Holden ute - and can be followed at Aussie Holden Ute-DAKAR 2019 on Facebook - while our 2016 motorcycle winner Toby Price has been in the top five again on two wheels.