MOTORSPORT: Safety warning bells ringing loudly

Just seven days after the succession of high-speed tyre explosions in the British Grand Prix there were serious safety issues in Sunday’s German GP.

The worst of them was world champion team Red Bull Racing releasing Australian veteran driver Mark Webber’s car without the right rear wheel properly attached and it bounced down the pitlane, hitting a TV cameraman from behind and knocking him over.

He has escaped with a broken shoulder and cracked ribs – and Red Bull Racing with a fine of 30,000 euro, or about AUD$42,500.

Another exceptionally dangerous incident was the Marussia car of young Frenchman Jules Bianchi rolling backwards across the track after its engine had caught fire and he had abandoned it.

The safety car that came out after that allowed Webber to regain much of the almost one and a half minutes he had lost in the wheel drama as his car was returned to its pit box and a right rear fitted correctly.

The Aussie wound up seventh at the Nurburgring circuit where he had scored his first GP victory four years earlier. Fellow Australian Daniel Ricciardo finished a disappointed 12th after another excellent qualifying performance – sixth in his Ferrari-engined Toro Rosso car, ahead of the factory Ferraris.

But, still on safety issues, the most alarming event of the weekend was an admission by F1’s monopoly tyre supplier Pirelli’s motorsport manager, Paul Hembery.

In the week of controversy that followed the British GP at Silverstone, it was Hembery who had said that one of the problems that may have contributed to the tyre explosions there was teams fitting right rear tyres on the left rear of their cars.

We provided links to Pirelli’s earlier statements at the end of our previous motorsport report last Friday. Yet at Nurburgring Hembery took responsibility for the practice.

“We allowed the teams to invert the tyres when we shouldn’t have done,” he said.

“With the cars going much quicker this year that creates different loads. With the inverted tyres you create a weakness point – and that was the issue.

“There were secondary issues, which have been mentioned, but I don’t want to take away from the fact that it was our responsibility,” Hembery stated.

This is a major confession after having pointed the fingers at the teams. It leaves those of us watching on to wonder, yet again, just what and who we can believe in F1.

The three-week “holiday” is time for F1 to reassess its commitment to safety.

There’s a similar gap now in the V8 Supercar Championship calendar – but it’s not so fortunate as Australia’s premier national series needs to build and maintain momentum.

The weekend’s Townsville 400 saw a strong re-emergence by the factory teams of the category’s two traditional makes – Ford Performance Racing’s Will Davison and Mark Winterbottom finishing first and second on Saturday and Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander and James Courtney on Sunday.

Tander ended a 21-month victory drought for HRT, despite hitting a wall heavily - and his and Courtney’s Commodores running without the intended front suspensions.

There were other positive signs for these factory teams too – Courtney and Tander sixth and eighth on Saturday and Winterbottom the fastest qualifier on Sunday and then fourth in that race, ahead of veteran Russell Ingall at his record 226th V8 Supercar event.

It was almost unimaginable that Triple Eight Race Engineering’s series-leading Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes did not make the podium either day.

While New Zealander Fabian Coulthard picked up the third podium spot on Saturday it was his countryman Shane van Gisbergen who was the sensation – robbed of glory that day by his Tekno Autosports crew dropping his Holden with the refueling hose still attached. This incurred a mandatory drive-through penalty. van Gisbergen then making up 25 places from last on Sunday’s grid to finish third for the final podium place of the weekend.

The compulsion for drivers to use both soft and hard Dunlop tyre compounds in the two 200km races, and refueling for the first time since the season-opening round in Adelaide, added spice to the Townsville races.

It’s just a pity that there had been a three-week lag since the Darwin round and now there’s another, similar break until the Ipswich 360.

While Whincup’s series lead over Lowndes has dropped from 159 points to 111, the Triple Eight pair still has a handy advantage over FPR pair Davison and Winterbottom.

And the evidence, after 21 races in this ‘Car of the Future’ debut season that has seen the addition of Nissan Altimas and AMG Mercedes-Benz E63s is that Holden still wins six out of seven races and Ford the other. 

Meanwhile, negotiations will continue this week over Queensland government funding of the three V8 Supercar events in the state, with its contribution to the Gold Coast 600 under the most pressure – and perhaps about to be trimmed by a couple of million dollars a year.

In America at the weekend Aussie Marcos Ambrose battled NASCAR’s five-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson for victory in the Daytona 400 – the second stock car round of the year at the famous Florida superspeedway – but his Ford got bumped into the Chevrolet of Kasey Kahne.

Johnson notched his fourth victory of the season in his Chevy to go further ahead in his quest for a sixth title, while Ambrose ended up 26th after pitting for late repairs.

At Pocono in Pennsylvania today Aussie Will Power led four times but finished fourth (the top driver with Chevrolet power) in the 11th round of the IndyCar championship. Honda-powered cars of New Zealander Scott Dixon, American Charlie Kimball and Scotsman Dario Franchitti swept the podium.

It was Honda’s 200th win in Indy racing, the 100th victory for team owner Chip Ganassi in all forms of racing – and the first time his drivers had filled all three spots on a podium.

It was Dixon’s 30th IndyCar victory and he became the eighth winner in the series this year.

Vettel stretched his lead this season to 34 points over Alonso, with Raikkonen another seven back and Lewis Hamilton – who had taken pole position for Mercedes but finished fifth – is a further 17 behind.

The previous week’s British GP winner Nico Rosberg had a horror weekend at home in Germany and with Mercedes, failing to qualify in the top 10 through a miscalculation by the team and finishing the race only ninth.

Despite having won two races this season Rosberg remains behind Mark Webber in the championship.

Webber made a brilliant start at Nurburgring, overtaking pole man Hamilton as did Vettel, but his race was ruined by the errant tyre in the pits.

“I knew we had lost the tyre in the pit stop, of course, but not that someone got hit by it – that’s bad,” Webber said.

“Today was a bit of a nightmare and you want to wake up tomorrow and have another go at it. We had an excellent start and were in a great position leading up to the first stop, but we lost all of that… We lost a lot of points, but there’s no rewind button.”

Ricciardo called it “a frustrating and rather dull race” in which he was unable to translate his excellent sixth position on the grid into a big race result.

“After the start I was able to hold position but once we pitted for the prime tyre I really struggled for pace and couldn’t push as hard as I wanted to get more out of the car,” Ricciardo said.

“I did try to push but the car wouldn’t take it… I began to lock the brakes and slide too much. I had to drive more smoothly, but it was very frustrating, going round and round, gradually slipping backwards.

“I can’t explain why for now … we will need to see why we were just too slow.”

While Toro Rosso is doing that, the broader F1 community ought to be looking at how it can tighten up on safety in the three weeks leading up to the Hungarian GP at the end of the month.

Formula One drivers’ world championship after nine of 19 rounds: 1 Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault) 157; 2 Fernando Alonso (Spain, Ferrari) 123; 3 Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Lotus-Renault) 116; 4 Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 99; 5 Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 93; 6 Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 84; 7 Felipe Massa (Brazil, Ferrari) 57; 8 Romain Grosjean (France, Lotus-Renault) 41; 9 Paul Di Resta (GB, Force India-Mercedes) 36; 10 Jenson Button (GB, McLaren-Mercedes) 33; 11 Adrian Sutil (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 23; 12 Sergio Perez (Mexico, McLaren-Mercedes) 16; 13 Jean-Eric Vergne (France, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 13; 14 Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 11; 15 Nico Huelkenberg (Germany, Sauber-Ferrari) 7.

F1 constructors’ championship: 1 Red Bull-Renault 250 points; 2 Mercedes 183; 3 Ferrari 180; 4 Lotus-Renault 157; 5 Force India-Mercedes 59; 6 McLaren-Mercedes 49; 7 Toro Rosso-Ferrari 24; 8 Sauber-Ferrari 7.

V8 Supercar drivers’ championship after 21 races: 1 Jamie Whincup (Holden) 1591 points; 2 Craig Lowndes (Holden) 1480; 3 Will Davison (Ford) 1376; 4 Mark Winterbottom (Ford) 1337; 5 Shane van Gisbergen (Holden) 1310; 6 Garth Tander (Holden) 1302; 7 Fabian Coulthard (Holden) 1291; 8 Jason Bright (Holden) 1269; 9 James Courtney (Holden) 1243; 10 Jonathon Webb (Holden) 1104.
   
V8 Supercar teams championship: 1 Triple Eight 3086 points; 2 Ford Performance Racing 2738; 3 Brad Jones Racing 2605; 4 Holden Racing Team 2560; 5 Tekno Autosports 2429

IndyCar championship after 11 rounds: 1 Helio Castroneves (Brazil, Team Penske, Dallara-Chevrolet) 356; 2 Ryan Hunter-Reay (US, Andretti Autosports, Dallara-Chevrolet) 333; 3 Marco Andretti (US, Andretti Autosports, Dallara-Chevrolet) 301; 4 Scott Dixon (New Zealand, Chip Ganassi Racing, Dallara-Honda) 291; 5 James Hinchcliffe (Canada, Andretti Autosports, Dallara-Chevrolet) 272; 6 Tony Kanaan (Brazil, KV Racing, Dallara-Chevrolet) 271; 7 Simon Pagenaud (France, Schmidt Hamilton HP Motorsports, Dallara-Honda) 269; 8 Justin Wilson (Great Britain, Dale Coyne Racing, Dallara-Honda) 253; 9 Will Power (Australia, Team Penske, Dallara-Chevrolet) 242; 10 Takuma Sato (Japan, AJ Foyt Racing, Dallara-Honda) 241.

NASCAR Sprint Cup after 18 of 36 rounds: 1 Jimmie Johnson (Chevrolet) 658; 2 Clint Bowyer (Toyota) 609; 3 Carl Edwards (Ford) 587; 4 Kevin Harvick (Chevrolet) 585; 5 Dale Earnhardt Junior (Chevrolet) 548; 6 Matt Kenseth (Toyota) 540; 7 Kyle Busch (Toyota) 533; 8 Greg Biffle (Ford) 516; 9 Kurt Busch (Chevrolet) 501; 10 Tony Stewart (Chevrolet) 499; 11 Martin Truex Junior (Toyota) 493; 12 Kasey Kahne (Chevrolet) 490. Australia’s Marcos Ambrose (Ford) is 22nd  on 429 points.

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