MOTORSPORT: Tristar's triple treats

The Mercedes dominance of Formula One just becomes more pronounced.

The German marque’s factory team scored its fifth one-two finish of this year’s world championship in Austria overnight, this time with Nico Rosberg beating Lewis Hamilton.

For the past two races, the third-placed car also has had a Mercedes engine – this time the Williams of Brazilian veteran Felipe Massa, the previous time was the Williams of young Finn Valterri Bottas, who came in fifth this time.

F1’s commercial tsar Bernie Ecclestone has said that: “The product we produce at the moment is a bit top heavy with one team winning a lot of races, probably too easily”.

Ferrari jagged a shock win at the second round of the championship and was on the podium at the first six races but has been absent for the past two.

Despite the Ferrari being the second-fastest car in the field, the Italian team is not getting the job done in races now.

It blamed a wheelnut for costing Sebastian Vettel time in the pits and third place in Austria, while Kimi Raikkonen was out on the first lap in a spectacular crash. Having started a lowly 14th, Raikkonen’s car had too much wheelspin – even in fifth gear – and when he lost control he took out Fernando Alonso’s McLaren-Honda as well – and was lucky not to have been hit on the head or hands as his car speared under Alonso’s.

The McLaren-Hondas started on the last row of the grid after penalties and, after taking another 10-second penalty in the pits, the one driven by Jenson Button completed only eight laps before an intake system sensor failure put it out.

Honda motorsport head Yasuhisa Arai insists there will be a big improvement in the second half of the season.

Austria, a home Grand Prix for Red Bull Racing (RBR), was always going to be uphill for Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo, especially after the team installed his fifth Renault engine of the season, incurring a penalty that relegated him to the second last row of the grid.

This GP had the second-highest attrition rate of the season – 14 cars made the chequered flag, three more than at the season opener in Melbourne – and Ricciardo was upbeat at notching the last championship point with 10th place, although Toro Rosso teenager Max Verstappen was two spots ahead of him and both were a lap down.

“I was pleased with the car during the race. I was trying to push as much as I could towards the end to catch Sergio Perez (Force-India-Mercedes) but the boys behind me (about to lap him) were fighting for the podium and I had to respect that,” Ricciardo said.

“I was really happy with the option tyre … the balance of the car worked well.

“To finish 10th is a good result from where we started today.

“I’m staying on here (Red Bull Ring near Spielberg) for a day’s testing this week and I hope that, despite the bad weather forecast, we’ll be able to get some useful work done before the next round in Silverstone (the British GP on July 3-5).”

RBR team principal Christian Horner said it had been “a strong drive” by Ricciardo to score a point from where he started.

“He effectively ran the race in reverse, running the slower tyre at the beginning of the race and then fitting the softer tyre at the stop,” Horner said.

Ricciardo’s Russian teammate Daniil Kyvat started ahead of him but his front wing was damaged in first-lap contact with Perez and, despite a change, lacked grip the rest of the race and finished 12th.

RBR, world champions in 2010-2013 and winner of three GPs with Ricciardo last year, has not finished a GP higher than fourth this season.

While the public utterances post-Austria are generally positive, Red Bull tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz’s bucketing of Renault last week is a sure sign that once-so-successful “marriage” is coming to an end – perhaps at the end of this season, a year before the expiry of the contract.

Ferrari or even Mercedes powerplants must be a better alternative for a year or two until another option can be found.

German Nico Hulkenberg followed up his Le Mans 24-Hour sports car victory a week earlier with his best F1 result of the season – sixth for Force India-Mercedes after qualifying fifth, splitting the Williams pair.

Hulkenberg’s Mexican teammate Perez finished ninth as Force India got both cars to the line in the points for the first time since Melbourne.

And Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado six points for seventh place with Lotus, after a spectacular pass on Verstappen, meaning he has now scored as many points in the past two GPs as in his previous 45.

Rosberg’s victory was the 11th of his career, and arguably his best. It also was his third in the past four GPs, although one was gifted to him by a team error in wrongly pitting Hamilton in Monaco, and he is now just 10 points behind his teammate in the championship.

Hamilton blamed a clutch problem for his poor start from pole position.

It was the first time since Rosberg and Hamilton became tristar teammates at Mercedes in 2013 that the German, son of Finland’s 1992 world champion Keke Rosberg, has started behind the English dual world champion, overtaken him on track and gone on to beat him.

Skoda’s Swedish star claims Rally Queensland
The Swede who was the junior world rally champion two years ago, Pontus Tidemand, had an easy win in the International Rally of Queensland in a Skoda Fabia, while Citroen DS3s finished first and second in the Australian championship round there.

Tidemand’s teammate in the Indian-owned and Skoda factory-backed MRF outfit, Guarav Gill, had an engine failure in his S2000 Fabia 30km from the finish at Imbil in the Mary Valley north of Brisbane.

Gill had led the Asia-Pacific championship round on Saturday night by 4.6 seconds after the pair shared that day’s 10 stages, five wins apiece.

Gill won the first of Sunday’s eight stages, then dropped half a minute over the next four stages and lost the lead to Tidemand before he was forced to retire on the event’s 16th stage.

Tidemand clinched the Pacific Cup and now leads Gill 108-74 in the Asia-Pacific series, with rounds to come in Malaysia, Japan and China – but first the Swede will compete at Rally Poland, a world championship round, in Skoda’s new Fabia R5.

The weather was perfect for Rally Queensland after recent rains that had made the notoriously rough gravel roads slippery as well.

Mike Young, a 22-year-old New Zealander in a Subaru Impreza WRX entered by Japan’s Cusco team, inherited second place with Gill’s retirement and finished four minutes behind Tidemand.

Indonesian Subhan Aksa and his Italian co-driver Nicola Arena were third in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X.
Dual Australian champions Eli Evans and Glen Weston finished fourth in the Asia-Pacific round but simultaneously won the ARC round by almost seven minutes from Adrian Coppin and Erin Kelly in another Citroen DS3 R3.

Molly Taylor and Bill Hayes, winners of the National Capital Rally a month earlier, were third in the ARC’s Queensland round, more than nine minutes behind Evans and Weston in their Renault Clio.

‘Jean’ Jeanney lets himself go in World RX
Rallycross world champion Petter Solberg conceded that Frenchman Davy Jeanney winning Germany’s World Rallycross Championship in a Peugeot 208 was a good thing for the sport.

“I must say I was very impressed with Davy – he was unbelievably quick this weekend,” Solberg said.

Jeanney, who scored three heat wins at Germany’s Estering circuit before taking the final ahead of Norwegian Solberg and his Citroen DS3, is the first Frenchman to have won a round of the World RX.

He is the fourth different winner in five rounds in the second season of the
championship.

Jeanney’s 22-year-old Swedish teammate, Timmy Hansen, was third and Hansen’s countryman Johan Kristoffersson fourth in a Volkswagen Polo.

Austrian team owner-driver Mattias Ekstrom failed to make the semi-finals after a broken throttle cable and a sensor problem in his Audi S1.

The next round is at Holjes in Sweden on the first weekend of July, with just nine points between the leading teams – Ford Olsbergs MSE, Solberg’s SDRX and Peugeot-Hansens.

Loeb surged from eighth on the reverse-grid race to take victory ahead of his teammates, Argentinian reigning World Champion Jose Maria Lopez and French veteran and four-time world champ Yvan Muller.

Muller had won the weekend’s earlier race at the Slovakia Ring and made several strong challenges before easing off in the final laps.

Lopez leads the WTCC again from Muller and Loeb, with Honda driver Tiago Monteiro of Portugal and Gabriele Tarquini of Italy fourth and fifth.

Chevrolet and Lada also contest the championship.