MOTORSPORT: Super Sunday awaits

Asia-Pacific is the centre of the motorsport world this weekend. On our soil there’s the Bathurst 1000 at Mt Panorama (see separate reports), the commemoration of 10 years since the death of the ‘King of the Mountain’, Peter Brock, and the anticipation of the ‘Brock’ mini-series on Network Ten on Sunday and Monday nights.

Elsewhere in our ‘zone’, the Formula 1 World Championship is at a crucial point in Japan, after Daniel Ricciardo’s victory in Malaysia last Sunday and the week of distraction since over the antics of the ‘Budgie Nine’, while the third season of Formula E gets underway in Hong Kong.

Mercedes goes ‘conservative’ after Hamilton fireworks
Mercedes claims to have found the cause of the blow-up and fire that cost Lewis Hamilton a 50th F1 victory at Kuala Lumpur’s Sepang circuit last Sunday – a “big-end bearing failure” after a sudden loss of oil pressure.

The dominant team in three seasons of V6 hybrids in grand prix racing says it has introduced a new “conservative” specification of oil for the Japanese GP at Suzuka, where it could clinch its third constructors’ championship.

Red Bull motorsport chief Helmut Marko reckons it was the speed of Ricciardo and Max Verstappen in the Renault-powered RB12s that caused Hamilton’s Sepang failure.

“We clearly had the upper hand… [for Hamilton] to go permanently full throttle was probably not the best thing for his engine,” Marko said. “But even without Hamilton retiring we had some things up our sleeve.”

Hamilton, who trails teammate Nico Rosberg by 23 points in the fight for the drivers’ championship, has reverted this weekend to the power unit with which he finished third in Singapore three weeks ago. Rosberg will continue with the unit with which he charged back to third in Malaysia after the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel crashed into him at the start.

Triple world champion Hamilton needs a third straight Suzuka victory to make up ground on Rosberg, who has had eight victories this season to Hamilton’s six and is in the best position of his career to win the drivers’ title.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner is hopeful that Suzuka, twisty but with three straights (and rain forecast for Sunday), “plays a little more to our strengths than Malaysia”.

Ricciardo and Verstappen are the only drivers to have won a GP this year apart from the Mercedes pair and, although a distant third in the standings, the West Australian this week praised Red Bull for its development of the RB12 throughout the season.

That progress has enhanced Ricciardo’s hopes of being a championship contender next year under rules that will allow more aerodynamic freedoms, wider tyres and more power.

The big, big money to be on top in F1
Financial figures published by Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd this week reveal the team’s turnover last year was £213m (almost A$350m) and that’s without any contribution (in kind or otherwise) from Mercedes’ parent company Daimler.

The team has ended each of its championship-winning seasons of the past two years in the red, but the losses have narrowed from £76.9m in 2014 – the first year of the super-expensive V6 hybrids – to £22.3m last year.

One of the reasons for that improvement has been more income from the F1 financial “pie” – those distributions are not called prizemoney and they lag the seasons, mostly by one year and in some instances two.

Thus Mercedes will reap greater rewards for its dominance of the past two seasons in this year’s financial accounts, which are unlikely to surface until around this time next year.

A Reuters report on the latest accounts said the net cost to Daimler of having the top team in F1 was US$30m (almost A$40m), but that Mercedes calculated the advertising value equivalent (AVE) from the GP telecasts at US$3 billion – or 10 times the team’s operating costs.

Mercedes sees Formula E as 'very relevant'
While F1 is very much Mercedes’ sporting priority, it is hedging its longer-term bets in open-wheeler racing by taking an option on a team in the Formula E electric series from 2018-19.

That will be the fifth season of Formula E, by which time battery development is expected to allow drivers to complete races in one car rather than switch to a second mid-event because of the limited battery life.

Formula E allowed for 10 teams for its first four seasons, with scope to increase to 12 in the fifth season.

“We have been watching the growth of Formula E with great interest,” Mercedes racing chief and F1 team principal Toto Wolff said.

“We are looking at all options available in the future of motor racing and we are very pleased with an agreement that secures us an opportunity to enter the series in season five.

“Electrification will play a major role in the future of the automotive industry – racing has always been a technology R&D platform for the motor industry and this will make Formula E very relevant in the future,” Wolff stated.

Mercedes-Benz and its small car brand Smart plan to launch more than 10 electric cars by 2025. Daimler and Mercedes chief Dieter Zetsche said last week that zero-emission vehicles would comprise 15-25 per cent of overall Mercedes sales by then.

Zetsche said the group was preparing a major push in pure electric vehicles thanks to advances in battery technology and greater consumer acceptance of zero-emissions vehicles.

Ex-HRT boss leads Jag back into battle
Jaguar makes its entry to Formula E in Hong Kong this weekend after a 12-year absence from major international motorsport since selling its failed five-year-old F1 team to Red Bull for $1.

The Big Cat has taken the place of Italian ex-F1 driver Jarno Trulli’s failed Formula E team and its race director is Craig Wilson, who ran Walkinshaw Performance/Holden Racing Team in Australia for six years.

Wilson fills the Jaguar position through being the managing director of Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), an offshoot of the Williams F1 team and which is Jag’s technical partner in Formula E.

WAE was already entrenched in e-Prix (as the Formula E races are called) as the supplier of the car batteries which late last year won the Race Tech World Motorsport Symposium’s ‘Most Innovative New Motorsport Product’ award.

However, Jaguar/WAE has had a short lead time – only four months to prepare their powertrain for crash-testing in April and to have the cars that Northern Irishman Adam Carroll and New Zealander Mitch Evans will drive homologated within weeks of that.

Wilson is playing down the chances of quick success, saying they are “playing catch-up” on more experienced operations, teams and drivers.

“If we’re winning straight away something is wrong with the formula,” Wilson told Autosport this week.

“The formula is very competitive. We know we’ve got our work cut out to be in the ballpark. In the first few races the target is to be reliable and competitive.

“We’ve had a very steep learning curve and timeframe. It’s like being in a 100-metre race and giving them a headstart.”

BMW recently confirmed an engineering partnership with the Formula E team of America’s famed Andretti family and hinted at a works team from 2018-19.

Renault has been heavily involved in the category from its birth, while other brands participating are Citroen’s DS, Audi and India’s Mahindra.

Swiss F1 team Sauber’s principal Monisha Kaltenborn has revealed that it contemplated entering Formula E from the start and that, since its recent injection of new investment that appears to have secured its future, it may look at it again.

GT World Cup a four-cornered contest
The GT World Cup in Macau on November 21-22 will have four manufacturer participants – one less than on its debut last year.

Mercedes is returning, with former Supercar driver Maro Engel defending the crown he won last year, while the other manufacturers are Audi, Porsche and newcomer Lamborghini.

Gone from the manufacturers registered last year are McLaren and Aston Martin.

There are Bentley, Ferrari, BMW and Nissan entries among the 24-car field, but those brands will not compete for the ‘World Cup’ – which is staged as part of the renowned Macau Formula 3 Grand Prix.

Montoya on the scrapheap
Juan Pablo Montoya, once Michael Schumacher’s main rival in F1, has been dropped by Roger Penske’s IndyCar team.

Montoya lost his full-time drive after finishing only eighth in this year’s series while his Penske teammates (Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, Australian Will Power and Brazilian Helio Castroneves) finished first, second and third.

American Josef Newgarden, who has won three races with Ed Carpenter Racing in the past two years, has replaced Montoya, who has been told that Penske would consider fielding a fifth car one-off for him in the Indianapolis 500.

His only guaranteed outing next year at this stage is in the Race of Champions in Miami in January in which his opposition will include Sebastian Vettel, while the Australian representatives (most recently Daniel Ricciardo and Mick Doohan) have not been announced.

Alexander Rossi, the American who the Indy 500 at his first attempt in May, has been confirmed for another season with the Andretti team, ending any prospect of him returning to F1 and again leaving the US F1 team Haas without an American driver.