MOTORSPORT: Young F3 racers set outright Bathurst records

Monday motorsport report

Two-minute barrier at Mt Panorama in sight after F3 blitz

Another excellent performance by Daniel Ricciardo in the Chinese Grand Prix and Mark Webber on the podium in his first sports car race with Porsche, but the Easter highlight in motor racing has been the outright lap records at Bathurst by two young Australian Formula Three drivers.

Eighteen-year-old Chris Anthony from Cooma, on his first visit to Mt Panorama, on Saturday bettered the lap record set in February at the Bathurst 12-Hour by Shane Van Gisbergen in a McLaren MP4 12C by a whisker.

Then on Sunday 20-year-old Adelaide mechanical engineering student Simon Hodge knocked another 1.2 seconds off Anthony’s record, raising the question of how long it will be before the magic two-minute mark is broken for the 6.213km circuit.

Anthony won both the weekend’s F3 races at the Bathurst Motor Festival in a seven-year-old Italian-made Dallara chassis but Queenslander Ben Kersekowski in a 2011 Dallara snatched the series lead from Hodge, in a 2011 French-made Mygale, after having endured a 5G crash at Forrest Elbow in practice. All three have Mercedes engines.

Anthony, the reigning NSW Formula Ford champion, only made his F3 debut at this year’s Adelaide Clipsal 500.

His record on Saturday’s 10th lap was 2:3.8254 seconds – just 0.03 seconds faster than the previous best by Van Gisbergen.

The trio went below that time on Sunday, with Hodge – third in the second 12-lap race – clocking 2:2.6701 seconds as he chased Anthony and Kersekowski.

That compares with Greg Murphy’s 2:08.8585 “Lap of the Gods” in a Holden Commodore in the 2003 Bathurst 1000 Top 10 Shootout, which for so long was regarded as The Mountain benchmark, although it was subsequently bettered by other V8 Supercars, the late Allan Simonsen unofficially in a Ferrari 458 in 2011, Chris Gilmour in an F3 car in 2012 and then Van Gisbergen in the GT3 McLaren.

Anthony and Hodge race for Team BRM while Kersekowski drives for Gilmour Racing.

F3 is the only 'wings and slicks' category in Australia and uses a specially designed Kumho Ecsta tyre.

Seventeen-year-old girl Chelsea Angelo stood on the Bathurst podium over the weekend after a victory in the F3 National class and has become the fastest female at the famous circuit, also going well below Murphy’s long-time benchmark lap time.

Ricciardo betters four-time world champion teammate again

Daniel Ricciardo finished 20.642 seconds ahead of teammate Sebastian Vettel in the Chinese GP after having his Red Bull Racing team order his four-time Formula One world champion to make way for him for the second race running.

Vettel at first replied “tough luck” when told Ricciardo was on the same-compound but fresher tyres than him after having been instructed to move aside for him mid-race.

However, within two laps Ricciardo was past him anyway as the German moved out of the way and perhaps ran a bit wide.

Ricciardo has outqualified Vettel at three of the four GPs in his first season with RBR, was on the front row of the grid in China, and finished ahead of him in the past two races.

In Shanghai yesterday he was fourth as the Mercedes factory team finished first and second again, Lewis Hamilton easily ahead of Nico Rosberg, with Fernando Alonso a brilliant third for Ferrari – 3.5 seconds ahead of Ricciardo.

Rosberg, victor at the season opener in Melbourne, still leads the championship with 79 points to the 75 of Hamilton, winner of the past three races.

Alonso’s podium was the first for Ferrari this season and came in the first event for new team principal Marco Mattiacci, the former head of the company’s North America sales.

Alonso is now third in the championship, ahead of Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg (sixth in the Shanghai race), Vettel and Ricciardo – who is on 24 points but would be third had he not been disqualified from second place in Melbourne.

The governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) finally published on Saturday a full explanation of the reasons for its rejection of RBR’s appeal against that disqualification for his RB10 “consistently” exceeding the 100kg/hour fuel-flow limit.

It said little not already stated by senior FIA officials but emphasised that teams had to comply with rules, whether they agreed with them or not, and that there was no suggestion RBR had tried to cheat in Melbourne by disregarding its Gill sensor and operating off its own fuel-flow data.

Farcically, the chequered flag was waved a lap early in Shanghai, which shocked Hamilton because there was no cheering crew on the pit wall.

He lifted off momentarily before accelerating again for another lap.

The flagwaver’s mistake meant the race was classified another lap earlier, after 54 of the scheduled 56, which only had the effect of dropping Caterham’s Kamui Kobayashi from 17th to 18th, behind Marussia’s Jules Bianchi.

RBR team principal Christian Horner has played down any problems in the previously dominant team with Vettel, who clearly has had difficulty adapting to the new V6 turbo-hybrid cars and admitted during the weekend Ricciardo was doing a better job than him.

After finishing behind Ricciardo again yesterday Vettel said: “I don’t think there was a problem with the car. At the moment he [Ricciardo] just seems to get more out of the car than I do. There are a lot of things I don’t really like, but have the same car.”

Horner said of Vettel’s initial reluctance to move aside for Ricciardo: “He is a race driver. We employ these guys because they have that fighting spirit.

“Of course he is going to question it (the instruction) to understand, but as soon as he understood the reasoning he immediately moved aside.”

Ricciardo simply said post-race he did not want to start “any conflicts or anything” with Vettel, who had a strained relationship with his previous Australian teammate Mark Webber.

“At the end of the day we eventually got past and I was able to do my race,” Ricciardo said.
  
Formula One World Championship driver standings after four of 19 rounds – 1.  Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 79 points; 2. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, Mercedes) 75; 3. Fernando Alonso (Spain, Ferrari) 41; 4. Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Force India-Mercedes)  36; 5. Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault) 33; 6. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 24; 7. Valtteri Bottas (Finland, Williams-Mercedes) 24; 8. Jenson Button (GB, McLaren-Mercedes) 23; 9. Kevin Magnussen (Denmark, McLaren-Mercedes) 20; 10. Sergio Perez (Mexico, Force India-Mercedes) 18; 11. Felipe Massa (Brazil, Williams-Mercedes) 12; 12. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 11; 13. Jean-Eric Vergne (France, Toro Rosso-Renault) 4; 14. Daniil Kvyat (Russia, Toro Rosso-Renault) 4.
     
F1 constructor standings – 1. Mercedes 154 points; 2. Red Bull-Renault 57; 3. Force India-Mercedes 54; 4. Ferrari 52; 5. McLaren-Mercedes 43; 6. Williams-Mercedes 36; 7. Toro Rosso-Renault 8.
     

Laughing matters from the F1 paddock

A couple of glorious quotes from the Chinese GP …

Marco Mattiacci said Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo had rung him in America at 5:58am on Friday, April 11, to summon him as the replacement team principal for Stefano Domenicali.

“I told him (Montezemolo) that April Fool’s [day] was already far away, [almost] 15 days earlier,” said Mattiacci, who had no F1 experience before the weekend.

“But then after the second, third minutes of discussion, I understood it was serious and I understood that there was already a ticket ready to go from New York to Milan after three hours.

“I arrived Saturday morning (April 12) in Maranello at the Fiorano track.”

And ex-F1 driver David Coulthard had a nice take on the new, quieter engines in F1 that have drawn so much criticism (although the much-mooted meeting of GP promoters from around the world in Bahrain never eventuated)

“I’m a big fan of the louder F1 [of previous years], but in the days of Charlie Chaplin there was a picture and no sound at all, and still the people were entertained.”

Coulthard added: “Certainly a bit more sound would not hurt.”

Webber and Porsche on podium first-up

Mark Webber called his first sports car endurance race with Porsche, which ended with a podium in a rain-shortened event “a great experience”.

Toyota finished first and second with its new petrol-hybrid TS040s in what was to have been a six-hour race at Britian’s Silverstone circuit.

Neither of the R18 e-tron quattro diesel-hybrids from Audi finished – the first time since 2011 that the factory that has dominated sports car racing this century has endured that ignominy.

The other Porsche 919 petrol-hybrid retired after 75 minutes.

The race was red-flagged because of torrential rain 24 minutes before the scheduled finish, with 165 laps of the 5.891km circuit completed by the victorious Toyota of Britain’s Anthony Davidson, Frenchman Nicolas Lapierre and Swiss Sebastien Buemi.

It was a lap ahead of the other Toyota driven by Austrian Alex Wurz, Frenchman Stephane Sarrazin and Japan’s Kazuki Nakajima.

Webber crossed the finish line third, two laps down, in the Porsche he shared with German veteran Timo Bernhard and young New Zealander Brendon Hartley.

“It was a tough race with tricky conditions,” Webber said.

“We dodged a few bullets and survived some of the tricky phases.

“It was a great experience … I learned so much.

“We were spot on with the pit stops in terms of the tyre strategy.

“It was a brilliant day. I’m happy to have played a small role in the effort that’s gone in.”

Brazilian Lucas Di Grassi crashed one of the Audis heavily into the barriers at Woodcote 24 laps into the race. He got it back to the pits without most of its front bodywork and it was retired with a damaged monocoque.

German Andre Lotterer slid the other Audi off into gravel at Stowe. It dropped to sixth, recovered to fourth, but then Frenchman Benoit Treluyer crashed on the 94th lap at Copse, hitting barriers on both sides of the track and damaging both front wheels too badly to continue. 

The safety car came out for 21 minutes while the Audi was removed, allowing Hartley to close up on the leaders before pitting to hand over to Webber, giving the Australian veteran of 215 F1 GPs his first taste of sports car racing for 15 years.

Webber closed to within a second of Sarrazin and began to pressure the Frenchman before going past him into second briefly before diving into the pits for the Porsche’s fifth stop.

He rejoined a minute behind and began to narrow Sarrazin's lead again as rain started and the leaders pitted for wet tyres.

Nakajima and Buemi replaced Sarrazin and Davidson respectively while Webber stayed in the Porsche.

As the race moved into the final hour Nakajima extended his lead over Webber to more than 75 seconds but conditions rapidly deteriorated and visibility worsened, with drivers tip-toeing around the circuit before the safety car came out with 40 minutes remaining. Within 15 minutes the red flags were waved and the race stopped.

So it was glory for Toyota and a creditable return for Porsche, winner at Le Mans a record 16 times but without a factory entry there in the past 15 years.

However, Audi faces a race against time to get its R18s fixed for Belgium’s Spa Six-Hour in two weeks – the sole remaining lead-up event to the Le Mans 24-Hour in mid-June.