MOTORSPORT: Uphill this time at Monaco and Indy

A year on from arguably the greatest weekend in international motorsport for Australia – Daniel Ricciardo’s ‘redemption’ win in Monaco and Will Power becoming the first Aussie to win the Indianapolis 500 – the mood is far less sanguine.

There will need to be enormous attrition on the streets of Monaco for Ricciardo to repeat his seventh and last win for Red Bull Racing with his new team Renault on Sunday night.

And, while Power still has the might of Team Penske behind him, there has not been a back-to-back winner in the Indy 500 since his Brazilian teammate Helio Castroneves in 2001-2002.

There is a pall over motorsport globally at the moment, especially the F1 paddock, following the death early in the week of Niki Lauda, the triple world champion who miraculously survived that horrific fiery crash in the last German Grand Prix at the old Nurburgring and came back to greater success and lived another 43 years.

In the vein of Lauda’s own black humour, a joke is doing the rounds that Ladbrokes is offering 4-1 on him surviving his cremation.

On a far more sober note, the three surviving teams with which he was so closely involved – Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren – are carrying tributes to Lauda on their cars in Monaco. All members of the Mercedes team, of which he was chairman and a 10 per cent shareholder throughout its dominance of more than five years of the hybrid cars, are wearing black armbands.

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel is wearing a helmet modelled on one Lauda wore in his early days with the scuderia. Lewis Hamilton, who was recruited to Mercedes by Lauda after one world title and has won another four since with the Silver Arrows, was so distraught at Lauda’s death that he was excused from pre-event media commitments in Mediterranean principality that is F1’s crown jewel.

The mood there is the most sombre since 1994, when major safety changes were imposed hastily after the Ayrton Senna fatality two weeks earlier at Imola.

This year’s 20 F1 cars and drivers have already practised and now there is a breather tonight for the Ascenion Day holiday.

The Mercs of Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas remained the pacesetters last night after their five one-two finishes in the five GPs so far this season, with the Ferraris and Red Bulls the worst part of a second a lap slower.

The Renaults of carsales.com.au global ambassador Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg were more than 1.7 seconds off the pace, faster only than the languishing Williams’.

Some analysis suggests the Renaults look the seventh-best team on race pace but still behind the similarly Renault-powered McLarens, the Honda-engined Toro Rossos and the Merc-powered Racing Points.

Ricciardo was 11th and 17th in last night’s sessions and said the French team needed to find how to make its RS19s ride the circuit’s bumps better.

“There’s a few things maybe we can do with the suspension,” he said.

“Nico and I still have a bit in the bag, but we’ve obviously not got a second [a lap] in us, so we’ve got to find a bit more in the car – and I think we’ll get a bit more out of ourselves as well.”

Despite just a seventh place since switching from Red Bull to Renault yellow, Ricciardo said:

“I still see what I saw when I signed. My motivation certainly hasn’t dipped. I’m enjoying it. I really am. Obviously I’d love to get better results. Hopefully a special weekend here will kick things off nicely.”

But there’s no way it will be as special as last May, when victory came by holding off Vettel despite the failure of his Renault power unit’s MGU-K (motor generator unit-kinetic) – the source of an F1 car’s electrical boost and worth about 160hp – and compensating the Honey Badger for the win denied him two years earlier by Red Bull’s tyre stuff-up.

Will Power has been incredibly low-key this month for a reigning Indy 500 winner, although he did visit the White House and the Australian ambassador’s residence in Washington this week.

Power will start the 103rd running of America’s biggest open-wheeler race from sixth place, on the outside of the second row of the grid, in the field of 33.

He’s driving a Chevrolet-powered Penske Dallara again.

The other Australian in the field is James Davison, who will start 15th and on the outside of the fifth row, in a Honda-powered Dallara prepared by Dale Coyne Racing.

One of Power’s Penske teammates, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, is on the pole, while the other two, American Josef Newgarden and Brazilian Helio Castroneves, will start eighth and 12th.

They give ‘The Captain’, Roger Penske, a great chance of extending his record as the most successful team owner in the classic to 18 wins.

Castroneves is chasing a fourth victory to equal the feats of A.J. Foyt, Al Unser Senior and Rick Mears.

Al Unser Junior, a two-time Indy 500 winner and a regular at the former Gold Coast Indy, was arrested in Indiana during the week for drink-driving for the third time in 12 years.

He is a driver coach to Harding Steinbrenner Racing’s Colton Herta, the fastest rookie in the 500 field and the top Honda-powered qualifier who will start fifth, inside Power.

McLaren’s failure to qualify and give Fernando Alonso a shot at the Triple Crown – wins in the Monaco GP, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the Indy 500 – has remained in the spotlight, especially in F1 circles.

A comedy of errors came to light during the week. McLaren did not have a steering wheel for Alonso’s car before his first test of it in April.

The spare chassis was in a paint shop – awaiting McLaren’s papaya orange colour after having been wrongly painted – when required after Alonso’s practice crash. And mechanics, exhausted after working all night and confusing inches with centimetres, fitted the wrong gear ratios for the final qualifying run on which Alonso came up short.

Bob Fernley, the former deputy team principal of the Force India F1 team (now Racing Point), had been brought in by McLaren for the Indy project but departed immediately two-time world champion Alonso was out of the 500.

While McLaren chief Zak Brown said “it would be unfair to blame Bob”, he described missing the race as “a very significant low … a very high-profile loss … a lot of mistakes snowballed”.

American Brown declared that McLaren would learn more from losing than winning – something it’s forgotten how to do – and would tackle Indianapolis again, although there is doubt it will be with Alonso.

“There’s very good reasons why McLaren should be at Indianapolis – a big market, partners want to be there, our motor business is strong there. None of those change,” Brown said.
But things, processes and people need to change at McLaren, once the benchmark for preparation in motorsport.

“When we do it [Indianapolis] again I’ll make sure I’ve got all the right people in the right places,” Brown said.

Many looking on wonder though whether Brown is the right person to be calling the shots.