MOTORSPORT: Webber back as our main man

Mark Webber is Australia’s best chance of a big international motorsport success this year, unless Will Power can win the 100th Indianapolis 500.

A Formula 1 victory is unlikely for Daniel Ricciardo, even if his early-season results have been encouraging and he has an expectation that Red Bull Racing’s competitiveness will improve considerably in a couple of months.

Webber, a nine-time Grand Prix winner without ever clinching the F1 world title, starts his third World Endurance Championship sports car campaign with Porsche this weekend at Britain’s Silverstone.

It’s a six-hour race, with another at Spa in Belgium next month, before the Le Mans 24-Hour in little more than two months.

A WEC champion last season, Webber’s focus this year is on the French classic – arguably still the biggest motor race, certainly for car manufacturers.

Porsche has refined its 919 Hybrid, while Audi – having lost its mantle at Le Mans, where it had dominated this century, and without a WEC title for two years – is back with what it claims is a significantly improved, although perhaps initially unreliable, R18 and Toyota has ditched its 3.7-litre V8 for a 2.4-litre, twin-turbo, direct-injection petrol V6 in its new TS050.

Will Power came within a few metres of winning the Indy 500 last year and, already facing an uphill battle to regain his 2014 IndyCar Series title after missing the first race, to win the 100th running of America’s ‘Greatest Spectacle in Racing’ at the end of next month would be the ultimate triumph.

But there will be 32 others, perhaps including 22-year-old Matthew Brabham, in that “lottery” within those unforgiving concrete walls.

Power’s team owner, Roger Penske, is to drive the pace car – a Chevrolet – at that event as acknowledgement of his special place in its history.

Already celebrating the 50th year of Penske Racing, the man known as ‘The Captain’ – still hugely active at 79 – has been the victorious entrant a record 16 times at the Indy 500.

The IndyCars are at Long Beach, California, this weekend with Power 12th in the points after his third place at Phoenix a fortnight ago and road races in Alabama and at Indianapolis to follow before the 500 at ‘The Brickyard’.

Ricciardo is third in the F1 world championship after fourth places so far, in Melbourne and Bahrain, but Shanghai’s long straight will make his job – and that of his TAG Heuer-badged Renault power unit – even harder against the might of Mercedes and Ferrari in Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix.

He has one eye two months ahead on Montreal in Canada, where he anticipates the major Renault upgrade to kick in – although it’s unlikely to be enough to let him repeat his maiden GP victory there two years ago.

F1’s rules for next year are to be finalised in the next couple of weeks but Ricciardo is concerned that they are unlikely to increase overtaking – one of his great strengths – and make the racing “very dull”.

“The whole pace of the race needs to be quicker … a bit more intense,” he said.

While Webber is Australia’s main prospect for major success this year, there are lots of young Aussies abroad this year pursuing open-wheeler careers – and those in Europe are in action this weekend.

Sydney’s Joey Mawson begins his second year in the German Formula 4 Championship at Oschersleden, where he ended last season with one of his five victories.

Melbourne’s Thomas Randle, runner-up in Australia’s first F4 championship last year, fronts at Brands Hatch for the three-race second round of what’s called the British F3 Championship even though it’s for F4 cars.

Luis Leeds, also from Melbourne and a member of Red Bull’s junior driver development program, and fellow Aussies Harry Hayek and Zane Goddard will be racing in Britain’s MSA Formula Championship, also for F4 cars, at Donington Park.

Toowoomba’s initial Australian F4 champion Jordan Lloyd is already leading the US F2000 Championship with his next race another week away in Alabama.

Numero uno and intent on staying on top
For the first time in his career Mark Webber, nearing 40 years of age, will race this year with No 1 on his car – and he reckons it looks “gorgeous”.

Porsche’s 919 Hybrid has a lighter 2.0-litre turbocharged V4 petrol engine this year, a kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) with a motor generator unit mounted on the front axle and an exhaust recovery system providing a further boost.

The energy collected is stored in a battery pack that has been revised for this season, again for the top 8-megajoule category.

“We have to keep developing the 919 because the opposition is coming,” Webber said.

“Toyota and Audi have done a really good job by the looks of it over the [northern] winter and it’s all to play for.

“We have a big target on our back, everyone wants to beat us obviously after our sensational 2015, and we’re ready for that.

“The competition is going to be strong, but we’ve preparing well.

“There’s a lot of development still going on in the background (Porsche has done almost 23,000km of testing) getting ready for Le Mans.

“I’m hungry to get the Le Mans victory and go for the double (the season title again as well).”

Porsche’s one-off third entry won the 24-Hour last year – with New Zealander Earl Bamber and German F1 driver Nico Hulkenberg in it – but this year both the German marques in the fight for outright honours will field only two entries to contain costs.

However, the full Le Mans field is set to be 60 cars for the first time since 1955.

It will include the four new Ford GTs in the GTE-Pro category – two of which are running the full WEC, the other two in North America, including at Long Beach this weekend.

The limited edition of 500 of these Ford GTs for the road over the next two years – 250 each year – has just gone on sale through website fordgt.com, with the first round of applications closing on May 12.

The model has been created in celebration of the Blue Oval’s outright success at Le Mans half a century ago against Ferrari, which this year is fielding is its 488 model in GTE-Pro.

The hybrids now vying for outright honours can now use three aerodynamic configurations throughout the season but will have to use 8 per cent less fuel than last year, although the times they have done in testing were similar to 2015.

Audi’s R18 now races on one-third less fuel than the original V6 TDI in 2011.

The Audi has a new Ycom-produced monocoque this year, which has meant new aerodynamics and suspension set-up.
It steps up to a 6-megajoule energy system from last year’s 4MJ, switching to battery storage and continuing to use a motor generator unit on the front axle.

Toyota, which won drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles in 2014 but failed to win a race last year with its TS040s, has dropped its super-capacitor energy system for 8MJ battery storage this year.

Hamilton behind the eight-ball in Shanghai
F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton will incur a five-place grid penalty at the Chinese GP for Mercedes changing his gearbox.

However, Hamilton has found a positive out of that penalty.

“I’m going to have a race with some people at least,” he said.

He vowed to give teammate Nico Rosberg, winner of both GPs so far this year, “a run for his money from wherever I start”.

“It (the penalty) doesn’t mean I can’t win the race, which is my thought process, rather than damage limitation.”

Fernando Alonso was cleared to take part in today’s first practice for McLaren-Honda but was to have further medical checks because of the injury he suffered in his crash in Melbourne and which kept him out of the Bahrain race a fortnight ago.

“Mentally I am 120 per cent now, and physically I am 100 per cent with no pain in the past couple of days,” Alonso said yesterday.

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel has claimed that his engine failure on the formation lap in Bahrain and teammate Kimi Raikkonen’s fiery retirement in Melbourne were “not a big problem”.

Ferrari said “a very unlikely combination of circumstances” led to a valve breaking in Vettel’s engine and in Shanghai he will use his second of five allowed without penalty this season.

Rosberg has said that Ferrari “haven’t shown at all what they can do” yet and that “there is a lot more in them”.

Vettel said “the potential is there” in the Italian team’s SF16-H model.

“I’m sure we will be in a strong position to fight Mercedes hard this year.”

New WRC cars fast but not furious
Fears are growing in world rallying circles that next year’s cars will be too fast but not spectacular enough.

Triple champion manufacturer Volkswagen has started releasing details of its next-generation Polo R WRC while Citroen has been testing its C3 WRC.

Stage times are expected to tumble because of the more powerful engines, the return of centre differentials and increased aerodynamics, but drivers are concerned the cars will be so fast – perhaps half a minute quicker on some stages in Rally Finland – to be unsafe.

They are also concerned that the cars will look as though they’re running on rails.

Retired world champion Marcus Gronholm, who has been testing Volkswagen’s mule for several months, said someone watching had asked him: “Is your grandmother driving?”

He pondered whether “maybe the cars could be too efficient”.
Jari-Matti Latvala, teammate to VW’s world champion Sebastien Ogier, said he liked the idea of the extra power but was worried that “the aerodynamics will give the car so much more grip – especially on tarmac”.

“This could make the car look a little bit less spectacular,” he said.

“The cars are not going to be more spectacular when they are sitting down even more on the ground.”

Variety and stars the spice of World RX
The third World Rallycross Championship starts this weekend, with Citroens, Peugeots, VWs, Fords, Audis, Seats and a Mini competing – and Sebastien Loeb and Ken Block among the drivers vying with the world champion of the past two years, Petter Solberg.

The first of the 12 rounds for the 600-horsepower Supercars is at Montalegre in Portugal, near the Spanish border.

Norwegian Solberg is defending his title in a Citroen DS3 as a single-car entrant this time, while French nine-time world rally champion Loeb is in a Peugeot 208 run by the team of Swede Timmy Hansen, last year’s runner-up.

American Block’s Hoonigan Racing Division has entered the championship with a pair of M-Sport Ford Focus RSs for him and Norwegian Andreas Bakkerud.

Monsieur Dakar offers Loeb helping hand
The most successful competitor in the history of the Dakar Rally, Stephane Peterhansel, has pledged to help countryman Sebastien Loeb win next year’s marathon torture test for their Peugeot team.

Peterhansel has 12 victories in the Dakar, on two wheels and four, and said: “Now I drive completely for the team.

“Loeb can win Dakar [after leading much of the first week of this year’s event on his debut].

“We will try to help him.”