Aussie fingers were crossed Red Bull would confirm at Spa over the weekend that Perth’s Daniel Ricciardo is the replacement for Mark Webber in the championship-winning F1 team from next year.
Alas, despite a media scrum following the young Australian all weekend, there was no announcement although Red Bull F1 boss Christian Horner did say he would confirm Sebastian Vettel’s team-mate before the end of the European racing season. But Mark Webber, heading for Porsche next year and always a straight shooter, while stopping short of confirming another Aussie was his replacement at Red Bull said: “Everyone knows who it is and I’m happy for him and it’s good news for Australia.”
Ricciardo’s appointment at Red Bull will almost certainly pave the way for Fin Kimmi Raikkonen to return to Ferrari next year to replace Brazilian Felipe Massa. At Spa Raikkonen ended his 38-race streak of finishing Grands Prix in the points when he was forced to retire on lap 26 with brake problems in his Lotus.
They have a massive budget in Maranello and pit lane gossip says Lotus is behind in paying Raikkonen. However the deal isn’t done yet as Ferrari chief Luca Di Montezemelo isn’t 100 per-cent sold on Raikkonen as the best choice…but he says he has an open mind.
After a mid-season slump, Ferrari was back on the pace at Spa with Fernando Alonso running strong all race but ultimately finished second, some 17-seconds behind the number one Red Bull-Renault. The fact is Vettel extended his championship lead with a flawless race in Belgium.
The young German started second but passed pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-Benz Petronas) on the first lap and enjoyed a 2.8-seciond lead after three laps. The Red Bulls debuted a new-design smaller rear wing in Spa which although costing some mid-corner grip did make them noticeably faster in a straight line – so it’s likely the same wings will be used at the ultra-fast Monza circuit for the Italian Grand Prix.
Along the way, Vettel passed another milestone as he clocked-up his 2000th lap as the leader of an F1 Grand Prix. He’s in elite company - only four other drivers have achieved this feat and their names would be Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna.
Webber started third, dropped to sixth in the early going before fighting back to second at one stage. Tossing-up between a one-stop race or a two-stop race was the strategy game in Belgium and Red Bull elected to give Webber a long stint on the hard compound Pirelli tyres and ultimately this left him without good enough rubber to mount a serious challenge to the fourth-placed Mercedes-Benz Petronas of Nico Rosberg and the Aussie finished fifth.
Britain’s Lewis Hamilton finished third in his Mercedes-Benz Petronas after qualifying fastest and starting from pole position. Both Hamilton and Mercedes-Benz Petronas chief Ross Brawn lobbied for the Spa circuit’s pole position to be swapped from the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side claiming the guy who starts second (Vettel) actually had an advantage because he just needed to go steady around the first corner and then pass for the lead after getting a slipstream from the pole-sitter up the long straight which follows (the pole man being slower through the first right-hander because he’s on the wrong side they claimed).
That’s exactly how things panned-out at the race start and no-one got close to Vettel for the rest of the afternoon.
It seems the Mercedes-Benz Petronas are fast on light fuel loads but are still wearing their front tyres more than the Red Bulls on full fuel loads.
And no joy for McLaren unfortunately in the first race back after the summer break with Jenson Button laboring hard all afternoon to finish a lonely fifth. We’re still hoping the likeable Brit will achieve his 50th Grand Prix podium position in this, the 50th year of McLaren in Grand Prix racing.
The other new from Spa concerned tyres for next year. As we know, there’s an engine change for next year as we revert to turbocharged 1.5-litre V6 engines in F1 and Pirelli has already given a ‘heads-up’ about the need to settle on a race format so suitable tyres can be created and manufactured in time for the first pre-season tests.
From left field has come Michelin – but with a proviso. The French giant wants to use 18-inch tyres, just like the tyres it currently supplies for sports car racing.
This is a massive change for the F1 designers as the Pirelli tyres are 13-inches high and 60 per-cent of the suspension compression in an F1 car currently comes from those resulting high tyre sidewalls. Swap to an 18-inch tyre with a comparatively low profile requires a complete re-think of suspension design.
Stand-by for further news on this front we suspect.
By scoring his 31st Grand Prix victory (to equal Mansell on that number) Vettel extended his points lead and now has a two race cushion over Alonso at the top of the table.
The top eight are:
Vettel 197
Alonso 151
Hamilton 139
Raikkonen 134
Webber 115
Rosberg 96
Massa 67
Grosjean 53
