MOTORSPORT: Stiff luck for young Aussie overseas

On the weekend he was named CAMS young driver of the year for the second straight time, 20-year-old Sydney international racer Joey Mawson finished on top in another championship overseas – but lost it.

Instead the title went to British 18-year-old Harrison Newey, son of the most successful designer of Formula 1 cars, Adrian Newey, who is now overseeing the final touches to the Red Bull RB13 that will be launched next Sunday for Daniel Ricciardo to drive this year.

Mawson, already the reigning champion from last year’s German Formula 4 series, in which he beat Michael Schumacher’s teenage son, has been racing over the past three months in the MRF Challenge in the Middle East and India.

Drivers competed in identical Dallara Formula 3 chassis powered by 2-litre, 250-horsepower Mountune Duractec engines running on tyres from Indian manufacturer MRF – the acronym for Madras Rubber Factory.

Mawson had been the leader in the series going into the final round at Chennai in India, after rounds in Bahrain, Dubai and New Delhi.

There were four races in Chennai and Mawson won the second on Saturday, dominating the 15 laps, to go into the final day with a 27-point advantage.

Newey won the first of Sunday’s races, with Mawson fourth for the second time in the city that is MRF’s headquarters and was previously known as Madras.

The grid for the last race was set by the fastest laps of the weekend, which put Mawson on pole position and he made a terrific start, but his early lead was neutralised by a safety car intervention.

On the restart Mawson was pressured by Newey but kept him at bay until the Brit found a way past when the Australian made a small mistake with five laps remaining.

Schumacher Junior, still only 17, also snuck by, although his title chances had ended on Saturday.

Newey went on to win the race and clocked the fastest lap on the 15th and final lap, earning two bonus points that drew him level with Mawson – third in that last race – on 277.

The title then went to the British youngster on a countback.

He had won seven of the 16 races in the series to Mawson’s three, although the Australian was more consistent – he was on the podium 12 times and was the only driver in the field to finish in the top six in every race.

“It hurts to lose by so little, but it has been a good experience,” Mawson said.

“I’ve really had some good battles while continually learning.

“It was a tough final round. I had a difficult car all across the weekend, battling with the set-up, but I put up the best fight that I could.”

Mawson will turn 21 on March 27, the day after the Australian F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne, but is yet to confirm where he will be competing the rest of this year, although it is expected to be in the European F3 Championship.

Dutch team Van Amersfoort Racing, for which he won the German F4 title, indicated before Christmas that it was keen to field Mawson in F3, but so far it has only confirmed Brazilian Pedro Piquet for a second season in Euro F3, starting at Britain’s Silverstone in mid-April.

Piquet, 18, a son of Brazilian triple F1 world champion Nelson Piquet and brother of ex-Renault F1 driver Nelson Junior, recently finished a narrow runner-up in New Zealand’s open-wheeler Toyota Racing Series to Melbourne’s Thomas Randle.

Schumacher Junior, who turns 18 five days before Mawson’s birthday, is confirmed for Euro F3 with Italian-based Prema Powerteam for which Australian Ryan Briscoe won the 2003 Euro F3 title.
New F1 cars roll out this week
Williams is the first of the F1 teams to reveal its car – but only in photographs and video – for the season starting in Melbourne in little over a month and bringing back more aggressive aerodynamics and wider tyres.

Designated the FW40, marking the team’s 40th anniversary, it has a lower and wider rear wing and swept-back front wing, while its nose and sidepods are similar to its immediate predecessor.

To be driven by Canadian rookie Lance Stroll and Brazilian veteran Felipe Massa, dragged out of retirement after Valtteri Bottas was poached by Mercedes to replace retired reigning world champion Nico Rosberg, the FW40 will be more formally launched on Saturday before the first of F1’s two four-day tests in Barcelona starts on Monday.

Swiss team Sauber will launch its Ferrari-engined C36 car online tonight, but its new driver, Mercedes protege Pascal Wehrlein, won’t participate in the first test because of a back injury from his crash at last month’s Race of Champions in Miami. Ferrari’s third (reserve) driver Antonio Giovinazzi, winner of five GP2 races last year, will deputise for Wehrlein.

The Renault RS17 is to be unveiled tomorrow, the Force India VJM10 on Wednesday, the Mercedes W08 on Thursday, the new Ferrari on Friday and then the McLaren MCL32, Red Bull RB13, Toro Rosso STR12 and Haas VF17 the day before testing starts.

Fiat and Ferrari chief Sergio Marchionne says he won’t be making any predictions about his team after admitting he was left looking “silly” last season as it failed to win a GP.

Renault’s chief technical officer Bob Bell has said that the power plant in the Red Bulls to be driven by Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen and the factory team cars of Nico Hulkenberg and Jolyon Palmer has “moved on a lot” from those of the previous three seasons of the 1.6-litre hybrids.

“It’s certainly [still] behind Mercedes, there or thereabouts with Ferrari, maybe slightly off – but not by much,” Bell said, admitting that it would be next year before the French manufacturer’s unit was “right on” the Merc.

Honda, woefully uncompetitive in its two years back in F1 with McLaren, has done a major reconfiguration of its power unit for this season but is likely to remain No.4 among the suppliers for a while yet.

F1 teams are pressing for the ban of more than two decades on active suspensions to be lifted for next year.

Chevy starts NASCAR season out front
America’s NASCAR season is just a week away now and will begin with two Chevrolets on the front row for the Daytona 500.

A dozen drivers qualified for the pole position run-off at the weekend at speeds averaging more than 300kmh, with 21-year-old Chase Elliott the top qualifier for the second year, just 0.0002 seconds ahead of the returning Dale Earnhardt Junior around the 2.5-mile (4km) banked oval in Florida.

Earnhardt, twice Elliott’s age, missed the second half of last season after a bad concussion in a crash in June.

He and Elliott are both sons of NASCAR Hall of Famers – seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt, who died in a crash on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, and two-time winner of that classic and 1988 season champion, Bill Elliott – and both drive for Hendrick Motorsports.

It is the fifth time owner Rick Hendrick has locked out the front row for the Daytona 500 and the 11th time he has had a car on the pole.

Elliott is the youngest driver to have started from the pole in the event but his race last year race ended on the grass less than 10 per cent of the way into the 200 laps.

The rest of the field will be determined from two sprint races on Thursday.

Penske-Ford driver Brad Keselowski missed out on a front-row start by 0.046 seconds, while his teammate Joey Logano won the ‘Clash’ – a warm-up race – after Keselowski and Toyota driver Denny Hamlin, last year’s winner of the 500, collided on the last lap.

Under a new scoring format this season, points in Cup races will be awarded to the top 10 drivers after the first two designated segments and then to the full field at the finish.
Ford, which has not won a NASCAR Cup title since 2004, has linked up this season with Stewart-Haas Racing for its third major alliance.

Through that deal the Blue Oval reconnects with its 2004 champion Kurt Busch and also gains 2014 champion Kevin Harvick, the sport’s only woman driver, Danica Patrick, and Clint Bowyer, who has replaced the retired Tony Stewart.

Team Penske scored seven of Ford’s eight wins in the 36 rounds last year, while Roush Fenway Racing – builder of the Ford engines – has long been the manufacturer’s front-line team.

Toyota won 15 races last season and the manufacturer title after a decade of trying and 13 years of Chevrolet as the top manufacturer.

Despite the ‘bowtie’ brand losing that mantle to its Japanese rival, Jimmie Johnson won a record-equalling seventh driver championship for Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports.

Among the 13 Fords in the series this season is a single entry from Australian Marcos Ambrose’s final team in America, Richard Petty Motorsports, for Aric Almirola.

Richard ‘The King’ Petty was the first of NASCAR’s three seven-time champions, winning a record 200 Cup races, but he has fallen well short of that success as a team owner since then.