Hamilton closes on Rosberg, more disappointment for Ricciardo, Hyundai trumps VW in WRC and lots more. Australian motor racing s most senior sporting official, former grand prix driver Tim Schenken (pictured), has received an Order of Australia in today s (June 13) Queen s Birthday honours. Meantime, the F1 world championship is alive, with Lewis Hamilton s successive wins the latest in Canada this morning now just nine points behind his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, who had won the first four GPs of the year but has now gone three races without a podium.
The second anniversary of Daniel Ricciardo s maiden GP victory in Montreal two years ago was a disappointment the Australian finished only seventh after having qualified fourth and there was another pitstop delay getting a right front tyre on today. Hyundai has notched its second World Rally Championship win of the year, with Belgian driver Thierry Neuville adding to his victory for the Korean manufacturer 22 months ago and that of New Zealander Hayden Paddon in Argentina this season. There have been different winners in each of the past five rounds now and while Volkswagen remains the top manufacturer there also has been a win by Citroen, a part-time entrant this year. Australia s Dakar Rally hero Toby Price is on course for Ironman status at the Finke Desert Race in central Australia. Price won Sunday s outbound motorcycle leg from Alice Springs on his KTM 500 EXC after having earlier finished fifth in a 6-litre Geiser Brothers trophy truck and this morning has completed the return leg on four wheels, with the last 226km motorcycle to come (as this report was filed).
Both Roger Penske s NASCAR drivers are qualified for Sprint Cup s Chase at the end of the season after Joey Logano won at Michigan. Brad Keselowski had already made the Chase with an earlier victory in one of Penske s Fords. The IndyCar round at Texas Motor Speedway was delayed a day because of rain, then was interrupted by rain again and a huge crash from which American Josef Newgarden appears to have escaped serious injury. The race will now be run in late August. Australian Will Power was fourth behind Canadian leader James Hinchcliffe when it was red-flagged Sunday. Russian manufacturer Lada is celebrating its first World Touring Car Championship success with its Vesta model. Italian Gabriele Tarquini and Dutchman Nicky Catsburg were first and second in two races on Lada s home ground at Moscow Raceway, with the order reversed in each. Tarquini s victory was his 21st in the WTCC. He lost his drive with Honda this year. Catsburg s win was his first in the WTCC.
Norwegian Andreas Bakkerud also had a big triumph on home soil at the weekend, becoming the first driver in 2? seasons of the World Rallycross Championship to win all four qualifying sessions, a semi-final and the final at a place called Hell. Bakkerud was driving a new Ford Focus RS for Ken Block s Hoonigan Racing Division. Sweden s Tommy Hansen was second in a Peugeot and his countryman Mattias Ekstrom retained the series lead in his Audi with third place. Two-time champion Petter Solberg of Norway was fourth and is five points behind Ekstrom, while French rally great Sebastien Loeb, Hansen s teammate, was fifth.
And a new four-wheel record has been set at the Isle of Man with three-time British rally champion Mark Higgins turning a lap of the revered 60.7km (37.73-mile) road course in 17 minutes 25.139 seconds in a Prodrive-prepared Subaru WRX for an average speed of 128.73mph almost 207.2kmh. Higgins was sure he could have averaged 130mph on another run but was denied by delays because of motorcycle fatalities and rain. The WRX (based on a 2008 world rally car but with a bigger turbocharger to produce 600-horsepower and 800Nm of torque and running on Dunlop slick tyres) had phenomenal corner speed, offsetting its tardiness on the straights, on which it struggled to reach 170mph (273.6kmh) while the best bikes reach 203mph (367.76km). Gong for Schenken, Australia s only Ferrari factory driver
Tim Schenken has been best known in recent years as the race director of the Supercar Championship and clerk of course of the Australian Grand Prix.
But his place in the sport s history is that he is one of only five Australian drivers to have scored points in the F1 world championship (from third place in the 1971 Austrian GP and sixth in the German GP) and that he is the only Aussie to have been a Ferrari factory driver. That was in sports cars, rather than F1. Indeed, in 1972 Schenken won the world championship for makes with the Italian team a title equivalent to the World Endurance Championship that Mark Webber won last year with Porsche. The only other Aussies to have scored F1 championship points have been our two world champions, the late Sir Jack Brabham and Alan Jones, and Webber and Daniel Ricciardo.
Schenken, whose week-day job Is director of racing operations at the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS), was the Australian hillclimb champion in 1964 before going to Europe, where he promptly won the British Formula Ford and Formula 3 championships in the same season 1968. He was later a partner in the racing car construction company TIGA with New Zealander ex-F1 driver, Howden Ganley. Apart from his Supercar and F1 roles, Schenken has had various roles abroad, including with the Federation Internationale de l Automobile (FIA) touring car and circuits commissions and more recently the electric open-wheeler series, Formula E.
He said he felt privileged to have spent most of my life in motorsport in one capacity or another . Hamilton boxes on as Merc stays ahead of F1 rivals
Lewis Hamilton s F1 victory today was the 45th of his career and his fifth in Montreal and he dedicated it to the late boxing great, Muhammad Ali. Hamilton uttered the famous Ali line, Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee , on his cool-down lap and then did a couple Ali shuffles once out of the cockpit.
I was just floating out there, the car was really floating, Hamilton said of his Mercedes after beating Ferrari s Sebatian Vettel by a little more than 5sec, although doing it easy, while Valtteri Bottas was more than 45sec away in third.
Nico Rosberg s championship lead that was 43 points a month ago but is now down to just nine points, while Vettel has leapfrogged Daniel Ricciardo into third with a new race at Baku in Azerbaijan, next weekend. Rosberg, edged off the Montreal track at the first corner by Hamilton, who had made a poor start as Vettel jumped the Mercs from the second row, could only finish fifth today, unable to overtake Ricciardo s Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen in the closing laps. Rosberg made a big move on the Dutch teenager on the last lap but spun as he braked and was lucky not to lose a position.
Hamilton s performance suggested that, while qualifying was much closer in Canada with just 0.354sec between the top four, Mercedes still has something in reserve and can stretch its rivals at any sign of serious threat as Ferrari and Red Bull-Renault (and lesser force McLaren-Honda) introduce improvements to their power units. Ferrari, already under huge pressure from Fiat and Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne to win, messed up its strategy again, with team principal Maurizio Arrivabene admitting we overestimated the degradation of the tyres . Felipe Massa s record as the only driver to have scored points in every GP this year ended with the retirement of his Mercedes-powered Williams today, while there were no points for either McLaren Jenson Button s Honda power unit having trouble, which put him out, and Fernando Alonso 11th and a lap down.
Not the best race for Ricciardo
Daniel Ricciardo wasn t smiling again after the chequered flag in Montreal, but (while he finished five places lower than in Monaco, where he should have won two weeks earlier but for a team mix-up with tyres) he was never going to repeat his victory of two years ago.
The start initially was okay. The Mercedes were really slow, so there wasn t really anywhere to go and then out of turn two, with Rosberg coming back on [to the track after being squeezed off by Hamilton), I had to go on the inside, Ricciardo said.
Max [Verstappen, Red Bull teammate] was on the outside and then I lost a position there. Then we were a bit quicker than Max on the first stint with the ultra-soft tyres and I said [to the team] I could be quicker if I had clean air (with the team telling Verstappen to let him overtake). But after my first pit stop I locked the softs and ruined that set of tyres.
I came in again and had traffic to Kimi [Raikkonen Ferrari], we were able to stay with him but damaging the tyres too much to really make an impact and pass.
We didn t have the best race today. Fortunately in seven days we ll get another chance. We definitely need to make it a better Sunday in Baku.
I m always excited to go to a new track. It s a street circuit as well, so it should be fun.
Hyundai wins and VW whinges again
So Hyundai (this time with Thierry Neuville) has won again in the WRC, and Volkswagen is not happy about it. While on the one hand congratulating the Korean manufacturer and Belgian driver, VW made its true feelings known in its media release after Rally Italy on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia.
VW said that burdened [by the regulations] with the task of opening the route for two days.
It was impossible for the three-time world champions [Sebastien Ogier and co-driver Julien Ingrassia] to challenge for the win without others slipping up Ogier/Ingrassia swept the roads clear for those behind for exactly 87.04 per cent of the total distance. VW said.
The disadvantage suffered on the first two days equated to one-tenth of a second per kilometre and per car on the route. The battle was as tight as 3sec at times between Neuville s i20 and the VW Polo R driven by Jari-Matti Latvala, but the margin at the end was almost 25sec with Ogier another 75sec back.
Neuville, out of form (and favour with Hyundai) late last season and early this year, won nine of the event s 19 stages and led from the seventh stage on Friday. Hyundai has now had two wins with its new-generation i20 and only missed the podium in one round so far this season. Its steady Spanish driver, Dani Sordo, has finished fourth four events in a row and is up to second in the championship, although 64 points behind Ogier who yet again won the final Power Stage.
VW, with two of the podium positions in Italy but without a win for three events now, has stretched its lead in the manufacturer standings from 49 to 70 points over Hyundai.
New Zealander Hayden Paddon, who won for Hyundai in Argentina, suffered another Friday crash in Italy while running only ninth.
Frenchman Eric Camilli, much maligned in his debut season with the Ford M-Sport squad, won his first stage in the WRC and finished sixth in his Fiesta RS, behind the similar car of Estonian Ott Tanak.