MOTORSPORT: Rubbering up for F1 action

Tyres are the great hope of producing some better racing in the Formula 1 World Championship starting in Melbourne this weekend.

F1’s exclusive tyre supplier Pirelli has made a wide range of softer-compound tyres for this season that will wear faster, create more pit stops and increase the likelihood of teams employing differing strategies.

Top teams Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull have already taken different tacks in the tyres they have selected for Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit.

Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola says it may take all the teams as much as half the season to fully learn the characteristics of this year’s tyres.

“Before mid-season the learning process is quite a steep learning curve,” Isola said.

Pirelli will stipulate three dry-weather compounds for each grand prix, with teams required to accept a set of each for both of their two drivers. The teams then get to choose another 10 sets for each driver.

Pirelli has mandated its soft, supersoft and ultrasoft compounds for this weekend, so not the all-new ‘hypersoft’ on which the fastest times in pre-season testing in Spain were set.

The hypersofts are basically only a qualifying tyre and, having to start the race on the rubber used in qualifying, a team would only gamble on using them if they foresaw a certain caution period early in a race that would enable an early pit stop to change to a more durable compound.

Not in use either at Albert Park will be Pirelli’s medium, hard and superhard compounds.

The selections of slick compounds that teams have made could become largely irrelevant anyway by the weekend, with weather forecasts indicating the possibility of the first truly wet race in 23 years of F1 in Melbourne – which would mean cars using Pirelli’s rain tyres.

Rain would guarantee some great racing action, even if it might not be pleasant for the fans who fork out hundreds of dollars for grandstand or general admission tickets.

On the basis that conditions are dry though, Mercedes – world champions the past four years – have opted for another eight sets of the ultrasofts for reigning champion driver Lewis Hamilton as well as another two sets of supersofts.

Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas will have the same number of ultrasofts as Hamilton and another seat of each of the supersoft and soft rubber.

Red Bull have been more conservative in selecting – beyond the first three sets stipulated by Pirelli – another seven sets of the ultrasofts, two of the supersofts and one of softs for its Australian star Daniel Ricciardo and his young teammate Max Verstappen.

Ferrari will go into the weekend with two less sets of the ultrasofts than Mercedes and one less than Red Bull for both Sebastien Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen, while the Italian team’s pairing will each have two sets of the supersofts and softs beyond those in the initial Pirelli ‘basket’ of three sets.

Fans at the track or watching on TV will be able to identify which rubber compound drivers are on at any time by the circular colours on the sidewalls of the tyres – purple for ultrasoft, red for supersoft and yellow for soft.

McLaren, now with Renault power units like those of Red Bull and the Renault factory team, has gone for the same spread of compounds as Mercedes’ Bottas, meaning that – all-up – Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne will have access to nine sets of ultrasofts each and two sets of supersofts and softs each.

But if it’s wet watch for rainmaster Alonso to perhaps deliver McLaren’s first GP victory in six years.

But remember too Verstappen’s brilliance in the rain in the 2016 Brazilian GP.

What Australian fans won’t want to see though is Verstappen win in Melbourne before our man Dan, the carsales.com.au global ambassador!

Nissan the giantkiller in US enduro

What a boilover! Nissan has won one of America’s great sports car endurance races, the 12 Hours of Sebring, for the first time in 24 years, ending Cadillac’s domination while the two Mazdas in the field led and neither of Roger Penske’s Acuras (Hondas) finished.

After 344 laps of the Florida circuit, a distance of 2070.5km, the 3.8-litre, twin-turbocharged Nissan prototype finished just 12 seconds ahead of the first of the 5.5-litre V8 Cadillacs, with another Caddy third.

Driving the Nissan for Extreme Speed Motorsports were Frenchman Nicolas Lapierre, winner of the first Australian round of the long-defunct A1 GP series at Sydney’s Eastern Creek in November 2005, American Johannes van Overbeek and Brazilian Pipo Derani.

F1 drivers generally emerge from the lower ranks of European open-wheeler racing, but 24-year-old Derani is such an exceptional road-racing talent that he surely must be on the radar of GP teams.

The GT Le Mans class at Sebring was won by a Porsche 911 RSR by 6.23 seconds from a BMW8 that came back from a lap down after a mid-race brake change.

Another Porsche was third and the Ford GT which Australian Ryan Briscoe and New Zealander Scott Dixon shared with Englishman Richard Westbrook fourth after an unscheduled stop because an electrical short in its headlights.

“It was a long, hard race and our car just got better and better as the race went on,” Briscoe said.

“Unfortunately that issue with the headlights at the end of Rick’s stint lost us our track position. That really threw us. We just couldn’t get back to the front from there.”

While Briscoe will race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June, the form of the GTLM Porsches at Sebring is great news for the chances of European-based fellow Australian Matt Campbell, who will be in a 911 RSR at the French classic.

CAMS claims ‘strong interest’ in TCR

Expressions of interest from prospective promoters of the globally expanding 2.0-litre Touring Car Racing (TCR) in Australia closed last Friday, but there is no word yet on how many there were or who they were from.

“We have received some very strong interest from potential promoters and CAMS will now work through these applications to identify the most appropriate party to promote the series,” CAMS chief executive Eugene Arocca said.

“We will announce the next steps of the process shortly.”

CAMS wants to have TCR Australia running next year. A document on its website that called from the expressions of interest from would-be promoters said it was allowing up until Friday, April 6, for a ‘discussion phase’ with the applicants and would select a promoter by Friday, April 27.

TCR series are already running in Europe, Asia and the Americas and VW brands, especially Audi, are keen to participate in Australia, while Hyundai has said it would consider it.

Arocca said TCR would “provide the opportunity for affordable, competitive action in cars that are direct derivatives of road-going cars”.