MOTORSPORT: World rally event on thin ice

The World Rally Championship’s only true winter round, this weekend’s Rally Sweden, is critically short of ice and snow – and its longer-term future is under a cloud.

The course already has been shortened from 331.2km over 21 stages to 241.5km over 13 stages – but Volkswagen’s triple world champion Sebastien Ogier wants it cancelled.

However, WRC officials and the event organiser are determined to press ahead.

The course, around host city Karlstad and the Hagfors region but venturing briefly into Norway, is lacking the usual cover of ice and snow because of unusually high temperatures and now needs the barometer to drop to around minus 10 degrees centigrade to provide anything like its normal conditions.

Teams have only studded tyres available to them for this event which will rip up the gravel without the ice cover.

“The roads would be completely destroyed,” Autosport’s WRC correspondent David Evans has reported.

“Each tyre has 384 studs fitted. Every car means 1,536 studs tearing at soft gravel roads, which doesn’t take long to make deep ruts in braking areas and on the exit of corners.

“Ice is far more important than snow [to protect the gravel].

“[But] the roads are very different without snow banks and the way the drivers attack the corners will also vary greatly.

“Without snow there will be no leaning on the snow banks.

“With no snow the key is to keep the car in the middle of the road – no cutting corners and no running wide.

“The economics [of this event now] are really tricky. If they cancel they’ll run into some severe financial strife with money already laid out, and if they run and damage the roads the repair bill could be crippling.”

The two-day reconnaissance was postponed and the shakedown and first special stage, scheduled for tonight, Australian time, have been cancelled.

However, the famous Colin’s Crest jump – named in honour of late Scottish world champion Colin McRae – remains. Indeed it is scheduled twice.

The tyre studs give the WRC cars more grip on ice and snow than gravel tyres do on a normal loose-surface road.

Usually in Sweden the average distance for a WRC car to accelerate to 100kmh is a little over 107 metres, while on more traditional WRC courses it is almost 125 metres.

Rally Sweden has only been called off once, in 1990, but the European Rally Championship already has postponed its planned season-opener in Latvia this year due to a lack of snow.

New Zealander Hayden Paddon is due to drive one of the new-generation Hyundai i20s in Sweden.

His teammates, Belgian Thierry Neuville and Spaniard Dani Sordi, finished third and sixth in this model at last month’s Monte Carlo Rally while Paddon’s hopes there were wrecked by a slow-speed crash that ripped a wheel of his older i20.

German rookie in F1 – only one vacancy now
Only one seat remains vacant in what will be a 22-car Formula 1 field in Melbourne in a little over a month after the Manor team named 21-year-old German Pascal Wehrlein as one its drivers.

Wehrlein won the DTM – the German touring car championship – last year and is a favourite ‘son’ of double world champion F1 constructor Mercedes-Benz, which is now supplying its engines to Manor.

The British-owned team almost collapsed last off-season and finished 10th of the 10 teams in the sport last year.

There will be 11 teams this season, with America’s Haas F1 the newcomer. Its drivers will be Frenchman Romain Grosjean and Mexican Estaban Gutierrez.

Among the contenders for the remaining vacancy at Manor are Indonesian Rio Haryanto, who has massive government financial support to secure the drive, American Alex Rossi, who was impressive in a few races at the end of last season, and Briton Will Stevens, who has had two years in F1 – including 2015 with Manor, then known as Manor Marussia.

Wehrlein, whose father is German but his mother Mauritian, is seen as having been placed at Manor by Mercedes to gain experience as a potential replacement for Nico Rosberg if he cannot topple triple world champion teammate Lewis Hamilton this year.

The BBC website’s report on Wehrlein’s appointment said Mercedes “also is keeping an eye on [Australian] Daniel Ricciardo and [Dutchman] Max Verstappen, both of whom are under contract to Red Bull beyond the end of 2016”.

“Verstappen's deal runs until the end of 2017, while Ricciardo's lasts for a year longer,” the BBC said.

Ricciardo drives for Red Bull Racing and won three grands prix in his first season with it in 2014, while 17-year-old Verstappen was the sensation of last season with Red Bull junior team Toro Rosso.

This pair also could be contenders for the next vacancy at Ferrari when 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen retires for the second time.