MOTORSPORT: Still red-faced but no sacrificial lambs

Red Bull Racing has promised that things will change in the wake of the disaster that cost Daniel Ricciardo victory in last weekend's Monaco Grand Prix – but they will be procedural rather than personnel.

So no heads will roll at the team that sacked a driver (Daniil Kyvat) barely a fortnight after he scored its first podium this year and which last year lambasted and publicly humiliated its engine partner, but couldn't find a new suitor and is now so much back in love with Renault that it's staying with the French manufacturer for at least another two years.

And Red Bull's junior team will come back to using Renault's V6 hybrid power units as well after just this season with Ferrari's – a deal done at the height of last year's 'domestic' between Red Bull and Renault.

More on Red Bull's post-Monaco damage control below, but before next week's Canadian GP – and the second anniversary of Ricciardo's first F1 win – there's the Le Mans 24-hour test day this weekend. And news came mid-week of the mega prize-money payouts after the 100th Indianapolis 500.

Indy organisers awarded Alex Rossi, the 24-year-old Californian rookie who won 'The Greatest Spectacle in Racing' at just his sixth start in the US after switching (not by choice) from F1 (where the Manor team preferred a driver with Indonesian government money), a record US$2,548,743 – more than A$3.5 million – for his triumph last Monday morning, Australian time, at The Brickyard.

Will Power, best-placed of the two Aussies in the classic, collected US$390,243 – more than A$540,000 – for 10th, and our rookie, Matt Brabham, picked up US$202,805 – more than A$280,000 – for finishing 22nd, and even though he was a lap short of the full 500-mile (800km) distance.

The total prize money from the American event was almost A$18.5 million.

It says much that a race at a permanent venue with a crowd of between 350,000 and 400,000 on that day alone can be so prosperous that the organisers can distribute such largesse, when Australia's F1 grand prix, at a temporary circuit but claiming four-day attendances not far short of Indianapolis, is now consistently $60 million a year in the red.

As with Australia's (V8) Supercars and the Bathurst 1000, the Indy 500 dwarfs the other races in the North American open-wheeler series, which this weekend moves on to Belle Isle Park in Motor City, Detroit, where it will garner only a small fraction of the attention of a week earlier.

Two 70-lap races will be run on the temporary street circuit there in the shadow of Chevrolet's headquarters, and the bowtie brand will be looking for some quick redemption after having two Honda-powered cars beat its fleet in the 500.

Power remains in the field as an IndyCar full-timer, while 22-year-old Brabham's career is back on hold for the time being.

Power is one of Chevy's main men for the Detroit race, but one of his three Penske teammates, Brazilian Helio Castronves, has been the most successful driver there in the 19 previous races, with three wins.

Another of the Penske quartet, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, still leads the IndyCar series after three wins before the 500. The other is Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, winner of last year's 500 but the first retirement this year in a crash at one-third distance, although he still collected almost US$340,000.

Word is that the usual split of the Indianapolis prize money between drivers and their teams is 40-60.

A win-win, however it's divided.

Aussies gear up for Le Mans
Mark Webber and Ryan Briscoe are in France this weekend preparing for Le Mans.

Sunday is the official test day for the 60 cars entered for the 24-Hour on June 18-19.

Briscoe is in one of Ford's new GTs competing in the GTE-Pro class – so no chance of outright victory, but still marking the Blue Oval's return to the place where 50 years ago it famously toppled Ferrari in what, in terms of machinery, surely is the world's greatest race.

Certainly it's the most important for car manufacturers.

Ford has had a class victory in American sports car racing this season – rather like Rossi did at Indy, going a hell of a long way on a tank fuel and finishing on fumes – and has had some good news already for Le Mans.

The Ford GT and Aston-Martin's Vantage, also in the GTE-Pro class, have been given a 20kg reduction in the minimum weight under the World Endurance Championship's latest balance-of-performance adjustments. It's the second weight cut for the Vantages this season, though they will have to run with smaller air restrictors at Le Mans.

Ferrari, which dominated the class at the two WEC rounds already run with a pair of AF Corse-run 488s, has copped a 10kg weight penalty.

No changes have been made to the turbocharger boost levels of the Ferraris or Fords, but Chevrolet's C7.R's air restrictor has been slightly reduced.

All GTE-Pro cars have been allowed an extra five litres in fuel capacity for Le Mans.

Webber is aiming at a Le Mans victory at his fifth attempt – the first couple with Mercedes-Benz, before his F1 career, and the past two with Porsche.

Porsche is eyeing an 18th outright victory after its 17th last year, with a wildcard entry – driven by German F1 racer Nico Hulkenberg, New Zealander Earl Bamber and Brit Nick Tandy – that is not being repeated.

Porsche is leading the WEC manufacturers' championship with 56 points to Toyota's 43 and Audi 41.

Porsche pilots also head the drivers' championship, but it's the trio in the marque's other 919 Hybrid rather than the car Webber shares with New Zealander Brendon Hartley and German veteran Timo Bernhard – largely because of the Kiwi's indiscretion in the opening round at Silverstone.

Unlike F1, the WEC rules for hybrid power units allow the manufacturers the freedom to take vastly different technical approaches.

Porsche's 919 has a two-litre petrol V4 engine with a single turbocharger, while Audi – seeking a 14th Le Mans victory – also has a single turbo on the 3.7-litre diesel V6 in its R18 e-tron quattro. Toyota's TS050, a completely new car this season from the Japanese manufacturer yet to win Le Mans even though it has had a WEC manufacturer title, has a twin-turbocharged 2.4-litre V6 petrol engine.

All three hybrid systems use battery storage, while Porsche has front-axle KERS and exhaust energy recovery, Audi a single front-axle KERS and Toyota twin-axle KERS.

Red Bull works on prevention, cure and beating Mercedes
So back to Red Bull and the wash-up from the great Monaco mix-up.

The big positive, as predicted here last Monday, is that Daniel Ricciardo has tried, certainly in public, to put the disaster of the prolonged pitstop that cost him victory behind him and look ahead.

His mind was quickly taken off the negatives with a drive at France's Paul Ricard circuit of one of Alan Jones' Williams FW07 cars that Jones drove in 1980 – the season that he won the F1 world title, the last by an Australian.

The root of the Monaco problem was that because it was a wet race five tyre compounds were available.

Ricciardo started on the full wet-weather compound, initially switched to intermediates and when he was called in for his second stop the team, seeing that the track had largely dried, was intending to give him the soft compound.

Lewis Hamilton had pitted just once in his Mercedes and been given the softest of the rubber available – the ultrasoft compound.

Red Bull thought that was too risky, but changed its mind from soft to supersoft for Ricciardo.

As the tyres had been stacked in the garage area in reverse order from wet to ultrasoft, that meant the supersofts were the fourth batch in Ricciardo's garage – perhaps effectively out the back of it.

The crew had to go further back, firstly to reach them and secondly to remove the warmers on the tyres, and it was in that process that it all got bungled. The situation certainly wasn't helped by communication difficulties between the arms-and-legs crew doing the job and those usually on the pitwall, but at Monaco overseeing the event from above the garage.

It was an unforgivable error for a top F1 team, one that not so long ago won four world championships and which recently has re-emerged as a bigger challenger to so-long-dominant Mercedes than Ferrari (the big reason why Ricciardo won't be changing teams in a hurry).

But it happened and, even though it's little consolation to Ricciardo, the team has apologised to the Aussie. Team principal Christian Horner has said during the week that "preventative measures" will be put in place to ensure there is no repeat of the mix-up.

"Yes, it was hugely frustrating, but afterwards it was never going to be a finger-pointing exercise," Horner said.

"It's a question of understanding what went wrong, working as a team to solve the issue and then taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"We simply need to make sure that robust procedures are put in place to cover any given scenario.

"There's been a huge amount of analysis into what happened, why it happened and also into preventative measures to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"With all such things there is never simply one thing that stands out as a root cause.

"It was the culmination of a number of factors that came into play during the race – [Ricciardo's new teammate] Max Verstappen's stop, an aborted stop, a change of tyre compound.

"All of those things contributed to a scenario where ultimately the tyres that were believed to be available were not within the garage, but were in an area that was quite difficult to access.

"And that, of course, led to the tyres not being available to Daniel at the point at which he stopped.

"In competitive sport you are always pushing right to the edge and that's what happened in Monaco.

"It's a question of understanding what went wrong, working as a team to solve the issue and then taking steps [to avoid a repeat]."

On a more positive note, Horner said: "We should have beaten Mercedes fair and square, so I think an awful lot of heart can be taken from that – an awful lot of confidence.

"The upgraded [Renault] power unit [of which Ricciardo had exclusive use in Monaco] has delivered exactly what Renault said it would and that's certainly a positive as we head towards more power-related circuits.

"We're relishing the prospect of the next few races."