THIS MOTORSPORT YEAR 2016: And the chequered flag goes to…

It’s easy to be mesmerised by the performance of drivers, but motorsport is as much – and, in reality, more so – about manufacturers.

So let’s start there.

It’s been another year of dominance by Mercedes in Formula 1 and Holden claimed the (V8) Supercars manufacturers’ championship for the seventh straight year. Porsche won Le Mans and the World Endurance Championship for the second successive year and Volkswagen the World Rally Championship for the fourth straight year, then promptly withdrew. As did stablemate Audi from sports car racing, which it dominated until Porsche’s rebirth in prototypes.

Toyota won the manufacturers’ crown in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup for the first time after a decade of trying, but was denied its maiden Le Mans victory with a failure barely a lap from the chequered flag.

Ford celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first Le Mans victory with the GT40 by winning its class there in its comeback with its sleek new GT, although it lost out to Aston Martin and Ferrari over the European season and to Corvette in America.

On the driver front, we saw some new faces ascend as champions, in particular Shane Van Gisbergen in Supercars and Nico Rosberg in F1.

The ‘other’ Porsche trio (Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas) triumphed at Le Mans and in the WEC, only for Lieb and Dumas to be dropped for next year, with New Zealander Earl Bamber brought in for 2017 as the replacement for retired Australian veteran Mark Webber.

But there were familiar faces too… Sebastien Ogier was the WRC champion for the fourth year and Jimmie Johnson in a Chevrolet clinched a seventh NASCAR crown, equalling Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt – and he did it fastest, in 11 years.

Daniel Ricciardo won the Malaysian Grand Prix and, but for team stuff-ups, would have won in Barcelona and Monaco, where his pole position qualifying was a ‘Lap of the Gods’.

Aussie, Will Power, was runner-up in IndyCar after missing the opening round, and new Aussie stars are on the rise – among them Joey Mawson, who beat Michael Schumacher’s son, Mick, in German F4; Will Brown, champion in Australian F4 and the Toyota 86s, as well as runner-up in Formula Ford; and Matt Campbell, bound for the Porsche Supercup in 2017.

Best cars of 2016:
>> Mercedes W07 – won 19 of 21 GPs. Miles ahead of even its closest opposition.
>> Red Bull RB12 – huge improver, especially the Renault power unit.
>> Porsche 919 Hybrid – 2.0-litre, V4 with two energy recovery systems supreme over >> Audi’s R18 e-tron quattro and Toyota’s TS050.
>> Volkswagen Polo R – only the WRC’s odd starting order rules this year denied it even greater success.

Molly Taylor takes out the gong for motoring.com.au motorsport woman

Best race team of 2016
Haas F1 – For a first-year entrant in grand prix racing, and from the US, to score 29 points and finish ahead of Renault’s factory team and vastly-experienced Sauber, as well as lowly but Mercedes-powered Manor, was phenomenal.

Admittedly only point came in the second half of the season, but Gene Haas hit on the right combination with Ferrari power, Gunther Steiner (ex-Jaguar F1) in charge and Frenchman Romain Grosjean as his lead driver.

Oh, and Triple Eight becoming Holden’s official, undoubted factory Supercars team was reward for winning more than five times as many races this decade (108 to 19) than the old HRT.

Surprise of the Year

Nico Rosberg retiring within a week of winning the F1 world title. History will record him as a champion, but he will be remembered more as a bridesmaid – primarily to Lewis Hamilton. Four-straight second places was not the way to go out, when he had so much left to prove – and the machinery to do it.

Disappointment of the Year
After two years back in F1, the Honda-powered McLaren was still 2.351sec a lap slower than the benchmark Mercedes, even with the mercurial Fernando Alonso at the wheel. (Plus Lewis Hamilton going 9sec a lap slower than he qualified yet still winning, and Toyota’s Le Mans heartbreak).

Not Max Verstappen, not Daniel Ricciardo (perhaps the most complete driver in F1 now), not Roger Penske (after 50 years of team ownership excellence), nor Jimmie Johnson, but, rather, Shane Van Gisbergen.

Supercars champion in his first year at Triple Eight, Blancpain GT Endurance champion in Europe too despite missing the last round, winner of the Bathurst 12-Hour but denied the chance of becoming the first Intercontinental GT Challenge champion by a suspension failure in the final round.

Only Sweden’s multiple DTM and Race of Champions champion and now world rallycross champion Mattias Ekstrom can hold a candle to Van Gisbergen for versatility.

The Kiwi will drive anything, anywhere, anytime – and most likely win… Fantastic.

‘On the podium’ with him for this award has to be Tekno Autosports owner and part-time driver Jonathon Webb as one of Giz’s co-drivers in victory at the Bathurst 12-Hour and then partnering Will Davison to the triumph in the Bathurst 1000 in October.

Jeromy Moore, who moved on from great Supercars success at Triple Eight to Porsche’s hybrid prototype sports car squad, deserves special acknowledgement as lead engineer of the winning Le Mans car.

And, if our heart were to rule our head (and we be allowed to include motorcycle racers as well), our top bloke for the year would have to be Toby Price, two-wheel winner of the two-week Dakar Rally (the first Australian to achieve such a feat) and then the Finke in central Australia for the fifth time, as well as taking second in the same race’s four-wheel division in a 6.0-litre V8 Trophy Truck.

Motorsport Woman of the Year
Molly Taylor, first woman to win the Australian Rally Championship. And she did so after the tightest tussle in 25 years, driving a showroom-class Subaru Impreza WRX STI.

Reading at page 18 of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation annual report that the accumulated losses on Melbourne’s F1 event over the past five years have been almost $290 million - $289.991m to be precise.

The red ink in Adelaide never exceeded $2 million any year, from memory. In Victoria these losses, on a race that was supposed to break even, perhaps show a profit (after it was grabbed from SA) have quaintly come to be called “government investment”.

What we would pay to see in 2017

Daniel Ricciardo, F1 world champion. Give him the car and he’ll do the job.