MOTORSPORT: Tyres wear thin but F1 plot thickens

Australian drivers Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo collected world championship points last night in Barcelona, where Spaniard Fernando Alonso further enhanced his reputation as the finest driver in the sport by winning from fifth on the grid.

He’s the only driver in 23 years to have won at the Catalunya circuit, notorious for processional races, after having qualified lower than third. In 21 of those years the winner had started from the front row – and most often from pole position.

It was Alonso’s second win in five races this year, the first GP of the season in Europe, and he’s right in the hunt to challenge for a third world title – and the first for Ferrari in six years.

Kimi Raikkonen and his Lotus-Renault could not match Alonso and the Ferrari, but the Finn chalked up his 22nd straight points finish after returning to F1 last year from rallying.

Brazilian Felipe Massa is back at or near his best and gave Ferrari the third podium position and moved it into second place in the constructors’ championship – ahead of Lotus but behind Red Bull.

Triple world champion Sebastian Vettel and Australian Mark Webber finished fourth and fifth in their Red Bull-Renaults.

Vettel still heads the drivers’ championship by four points from Raikkonen but Webber has dropped a spot to sixth, behind Massa.

Red Bull would not have the championship-leading driver had Vettel settled for second place in Malaysia in the second race of the season.

It is going to need big results now from both its drivers to withstand Ferrari’s challenge for the constructors’ title.  

Daniel Ricciardo continued to stake his claim for promotion from the Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso team to the No.1 outfit next year with 10th place at Catalunya and another point to add to the six he scored in China. Increasingly though that could depend on whether Raikkonen wants to go to Red Bull.

There were some strange happenings in Barcelona.

Mexican first-year F1 driver Esteban Gutierrez somehow set the fastest lap of the race in a Sauber car yet finished behind Ricciardo.

The Williams team, which scored an upset win there last year with Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado, was nowhere this time – Maldonado and young Finn Valtteri Bottas both failing to make the second stint of qualifying and finishing 14th and 16th respectively in the race.

It is a mystery how Williams could score 72 points last season yet not have opened its account this year.

Mercedes started with both its cars on the front row at Catalunya – Nico Rosberg on pole for the second straight race – yet they chewed up their tyres too fast again when it mattered. While Rosberg was sixth, teammate Lewis Hamilton was furious to drop to 12th at the chequered flag – and to have been passed by a Williams at one point.

“I’m absolutely lost – I just don’t know what went wrong,” Hamilton said. “I did absolutely everything I did in Bahrain (three weeks earlier) but the tyres just didn’t come in and give me any grip.

“If I pushed they went off immediately. It seems like others have made a bigger step forwards than we did.”

Most drivers made four stops for tyre changes for a total of 79 in less than 100 minutes of racing – although Raikkonen notably made only three.

McLaren’s woes with its MP4-28 car continue but Jenson Button, who has struggled most with it, edged ahead of Mexican teammate Sergio Perez at the finish. They were eighth and ninth respectively – Perez the last driver on the lead lap – and the mighty McLaren is only sixth in the constructors’ standings, behind not only the Mercedes factory team but also Force India, which also uses Mercedes engines and had its Scotsman Paul Di Resta finish seventh at Catalunya.

Next up is the Monaco GP in a fortnight, while Pirelli is promising long-wearing tyres by the British GP at the end of June. While it has been in the firing line over the degradation of its rubber this season it must be remembered that when Pirelli won the contract as F1’s monopoly tyre supplier it was with an edict from the sport’s commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone to make its rubber wear quicker to add spice to the racing.

Report suggests Ecclestone bribery charge imminent
A German report at the weekend suggested that 82-year-old Ecclestone could be charged this month over his $44 million payment to banker Gerhard Gribkowsky, who has been in jail for two years and has decided not to appeal against his eight-year sentence.

Gribkowsky was convicted of taking a bribe from Ecclestone. Ecclestone has never denied making the payment but has insisted that it was to avert Gribkowsky speaking to British tax authorities about his business affairs.

Gribkowsky had worked for BayernLB and represented it and other banks which owned the majority of F1’s shares some years ago. There have been allegations that Gribkowsky undervalued those shares when a controlling stake in F1 was sold to private equity company CVC.

American investors who claim to have been prepared to pay a higher price for that stake have taken legal action against Ecclestone.

German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung has reported that Munich prosecutors have concluded their investigations into the deal and that Ecclestone could be charged with bribery, with a court hearing later in the year – potentially threatening plans to float F1 at a value of about $10 billion.

How Aussie drivers saw first Euro GP
Mark Webber had another bad start in Barcelona – from seventh on the grid, promoted one place after Felipe Massa was penalised for holding him up in qualifying – and felt fifth at the finish was “pretty good”, while Daniel Ricciardo wasn’t entirely satisfied with his 10th.

Webber was the first driver to pit for a tyre change but in six laps advanced from 19th to sixth in the field.

He said he and his Red Bull RB9 “were struggling for the range (of tyre wear) and a bit of pace”.

“The Ferraris and the Lotus were in a bit of a different league and that made it hard for us to compete,” he said. “I think we got the most out of what we had, particularly as by the first corner I was probably 14th or 15th.

“To come back with that result was pretty good. We managed to get back in to the scheme of things, but we were always a little bit on the back foot in terms of tyre wear and ultimately pace.

“If you don’t have the pace then you can’t have the magic strategy. With the tyres performing as they do the races can be a bit frustrating, but that’s the way it is at the moment.

“I was happy with how I drove and we got some points, but it wasn’t the result we wanted. I hope we can be more competitive next time out.”

Ricciardo said he had “a really poor start, with a lot of wheelspin”.

“The first few laps of the race I really struggled with front grip and locking the front brakes,” he said. “I tried to be patient and eventually it improved and I could see the cars ahead of me were not pulling away so much.

“It was disappointing to lose ground like that, but the pace itself was not too bad. At the first stop we made quite a few changes in terms of wing settings and tyre pressures and that helped, so the next two stints were quite good and I made a few passing moves.

“It was certainly not a boring race, but towards the end our pace began to fade again. It wasn’t easy to get 10th, even if we looked on course to get more than the one point earlier, so it’s better than nothing.”

Formula One World Championship driver standings after five of 19 rounds -
1. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault)  89; 2. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Lotus-Renault) 85; 3. Fernando Alonso (Spain, Ferrari)  72; 4. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 50; 5. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Ferrari) 45; 6. Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 42; 7. Romain Grosjean (France, Lotus-Renault) 26; 8. Paul Di Resta (GB, Force India-Mercedes) 26; 9. Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 22; 10. Jenson Button (GB,  McLaren-Mercedes) 17; 11. Sergio Perez (Mexico, McLaren-Mercedes) 12; 12. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 7; 13. Adrian Sutil (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 6; 14. Nico Huelkenberg (Germany, Sauber-Ferrari) 5; 15. Jean-Eric Vergne (France, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 1.

F1 constructors’ championship standings - 1. Red Bull-Renault 131; 2. Ferrari 117; 3. Lotus-Renault 111; 4. Mercedes 72; 5. Force India-Mercedes 32; 6. McLaren-Mercedes 29; 7. Toro Rosso-Ferrari 8; 8. Sauber-Ferrari 5.

Carlos Munoz averaged 223.023mph – or 358.92kmh – on his best lap of the 2.5-mile (4km) “Brickyard”. Munoz has stepped up from the Indy Lights series to drive a fifth Indy 500 entry for Andretti Autosports.

Australians Will Power (Team Penske) and Ryan Briscoe (Chip Ganassi) have not been near the pointy end of the timesheets yet.

Briscoe, who started the classic from pole position with Penske last year, was a late arrival at Indianapolis after an American Le Mans Series race in California.

Indy qualifying – in which drivers make four-lap runs – is next weekend.

Meanwhile, Marcos Ambrose dropped two places to 23rd in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup after finishing only 34th in his Ford in the latest round of that series at Darlington, South Carolina.

Matt Kenseth scored his third win of the season driving a Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, finishing 3.155 seconds ahead of Denny Hamlin in another Toyota.

Jeff Gordon in a Chevrolet was third in his 700th Cup start – all consecutive – while teammate Jimmie Johnson’s fourth place extended his series lead to 44 points over Ford driver Carl Edwards, who was seventh at Darlington.

Ambrose’s Richard Petty Motorsports teammate Aric Almirola was only 20th there but is ninth in the championship.

NASCAR Sprint Cup driver standings after 11 of 36 races –

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