Comment: Opportunity Missed For Rosberg

Lewis Hamilton’s back to back victories in the Italian and Singapore Grand Prix couldn’t have come at a much better time in the title race. With electrical gremlins consigning title rival and Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg to a non-finish, Hamilton’s maximum 25 point-score puts him three points clear atop the standings for the first time since the Spanish Grand Prix in May, with 150 left on the table from the remaining five races.  Of course, three points is a far from insurmountable gap for Rosberg to overturn, particularly when one considers the Abu Dhabi double points lottery – but Singapore could well prove decisive come the final reckoning.

Rosberg qualified second in Singapore, but reliability problems ruined his race. (Thompson/ Getty)

One cannot legislate for poor reliability, but Rosberg appears to have lost his way since the now infamous collision at Spa that forced Hamilton to retire, saw the German branded a cheat and booed on the podium afterwards. Many had been willing to give Rosberg the benefit of the doubt in Monaco, when his error in Q3 brought out the yellow flags to deny a seething Hamilton the opportunity to set a faster laptime, but this latest misdemeanour – failing to yield to his team-mate when he had evidently lost the corner – pointed to his cracking under the pressure of an intra-team title battle as fraught as any in recent years.

It was a chastened Rosberg that emerged at Monza, where Hamilton again took pole position. With Hamilton’s sluggish getaway dropping him to fourth behind Kevin Magnussen and Felipe Massa, the race looked to be there for the taking, but two unforced errors at the first chicane gifted Hamilton a morale-sapping victory. Rosberg looked well and truly rattled.

That made bouncing back in Singapore all the more important to stem the tide. Qualifying just 0.007 seconds from pole clearly hurt – “damn it!” came his frustrated response to being told of the deficit to Hamilton – but with none of his steering wheel functions working on the dummy grid, Rosberg was robbed of the chance to respond. He was on a hiding to nothing starting from pitlane, unable to pass Marcus Ericsson’s Caterham with gear selection issues, no hybrid power and no DRS assistance and promptly retired the car for the second time this season. An opportunity missed, advantage Hamilton.

The German is without a win since Hockenheim back in July: that needs to change (Thompson/ Getty)

What remains to be seen is whether Rosberg can steel himself to fight back as we enter the business end of the season. Whereas his team-mate knows precisely how to win the title and is high on confidence after two successive wins, Rosberg has not visited the top step of the podium since Hockenheim back in July, a statistic he could do with changing next time out in Suzuka. Win there and it’s game on again, but another Hamilton win would undoubtedly prove a heavy blow to his title credentials. It's up to you now, Nico.

Richard Göransson in Profile – All-Rounder

If you haven’t heard of Richard Göransson before, then it’s about time you had. A four-time STCC champion, the 36 year old is one of Sweden’s top professional racers and alongside his regular commitments in Scandinavia’s premier touring car series, can be found in machinery as diverse as GT’s and rallycross – one of that increasingly rare breed of all-rounders with the insatiable desire to compete in anything and everything. 

Like his countryman Mattias Ekström, a double DTM champion who mixed it with the good ole’ boys of NASCAR before setting up his own rallycross team, Göransson has long held an interest in trying new avenues of the sport, stemming from his father’s hobbying in rallycross, a sport which runs in the blood in Scandinavia. But while a year of broadening his horizons is something Göransson has long desired, it largely comes about as the result of circumstance.

One of Göransson's many different ventures this year came in the Swedish GT
championship, driving a Ferrari Challenge with Martin Nelson (Martin Palm)

“Before when I raced I was so connected to BMW, so I had a lot of offers from different people to do different things, but I always said no,” says the Swede. “I’ve been with West Coast Racing and BMW for many years, but they had a tough winter financially and couldn’t offer me a good drive in time for this season – so having changed to another team which is not working so closely with a manufacturer, it opened up the opportunity for me as a driver to do different things, which fitted quite well with what I wanted to do this year anyway. 

"I said to myself that I would like to have one season where I evaluate different categories to try and find my way for the next three years, whether we’re going to do STCC again, or rallycross or GTs, planning for the future.”

It makes for a busy schedule and a lot of readjusting, as one might expect considering the evident disparities between a Saab TTA silhouette, 4WD Ford Fiesta RX Lite and his VLN Mercedes SLS AMG GT3, but that’s all part of the plan as Göransson evaluates his next steps. In the ever-changing landscape that is motorsport, even those with proven track records can’t afford to stand still. 

With rallycross on a seemingly indefinite rise, attracting FIA World Championship status for the first time and a cast list including 2003 WRC champion Petter Solberg and 1997 Formula 1 champion Jacques Villeneuve, there is no better time than the present to test the waters, especially in a transitional year where he is not expected to fight for the STCC title.

Göransson attacks the famous Höljes jump on his way to third
place in front of the passionate Swedish fans (Martin Palm)

“There’s a lot going on in motorsport at the moment, some championships are growing but a lot of them are decreasing as well,” Göransson points out. “On one hand you have rallycross, which is a sport with a lot of enthusiastic teams and drivers at the moment and on the other the STCC, which has been chaotic with different owners coming and going; it’s not been a stable championship. As a professional driver, you can’t just be in one place if you’re going to continue some more years because it’s tough to quickly change to something else.”

But that’s not to say the STCC no longer holds any appeal. Göransson is the first to admit that the championship has lost some of the lustre it enjoyed during the Super 2000 era before the disastrous split in 2012 – when the likes of Colin Turkington, James Thompson and Rickard Rydell elevated the series to one of the best touring car championships in the world – but the prospect of winning a fifth title, his first in the new TTA machinery, is one too good to pass up.

“Of course I would like to win with these new regulations, they’re good fun to drive with no electronic systems to help you, so it’s down to the driver and the engineer to get the best setup,” he says. “It’s a silhouette car, so they all have the same chassis, but they’re very well-balanced and they have a lot of power for Swedish circuits; they’re smaller than Knockhill, Croft and Oulton Park and quite twisty, so the only downside might be that they have a little bit too good brakes. 

“It’s a lot of work to prepare the car for different philosophies, to make it go quick in slow speed corners or braking or high speed and so on. It’s not like you spend a lot of money to develop a new suspension or a new engine, you spend the money on time to prepare the car and optimise it.”

Göransson took a season's best finish of second at
Gothenburg with his new team. (STCC Official)

Making that fifth title a reality would mean building Team Tidö, a young team in only its third year of competition into regular winners, but the foundations are already in place and the results will surely follow. After the Solvalla double-header, where he was joined at the team by the returning Janne ‘Flash’ Nilsson, Göransson sits fifth in points with a best finish of second at Gothenburg.

“I did the Safari Rally with Team Tidö and they asked me if I would be interested in joining their STCC team,” Göransson reveals. “It’s nice to have a challenge to help a small team and there’s some good people connected with the team who I worked with before when we won the STCC title in 2008 with Flash Engineering.

“Now when I race I want to have fun, so it’s really important to find a group of people to work with that you really like. Everyone there is committed to winning and when you have all these elements together then, if we have some time to build this up, I’m confident that we can have some success together.”

Beyond Scandinavia, the accolade Göransson really wants on his CV is the Nürburgring 24 Hours. The Nordschleife is a window into a bygone era of the sport and takes no prisoners. Up there with the classics of endurance racing, Spa, Daytona, Le Mans, success at the Nürburgring does not come about by luck. It must be earned the hard way, and Göransson has certainly paid his dues to the circuit over the last decade, a close second in the 2013 classic his best finish in eight attempts. 

The Nürburgring 24 Hours remains the one that Göransson really wants to win (Martin Palm)

Bad luck hit again this year as his ROWE Racing Mercedes was eliminated after being caught up in a few incidents, but the longer his wait goes on, the more determined he becomes.

“It’s quite interesting to see how there are drivers that do Le Mans and drivers that do the Nürburgring, there’s not that many that do both because they are two completely different races, even if they are both 24 hours,” he said. 

“I’ve raced there for many years and it’s one of those races I’d really like to win, but it’s so difficult to predict how it’s going to go even if you know on paper you have the package to win. Things can change so quickly in a 24 hour race with just one technical issue or one small accident. The check-box is not filled yet.”

British GT: Keen Puncture Gifts Team-Mates Brands Victory

Nick Tandy and David Ashburn capped a dream return to the British GT championship with victory for Trackspeed at Brands Hatch, although a puncture for erstwhile leaders Phil Keen and Jon Minshaw in the closing laps that robbed the team of a 1-2 finish made for muted celebrations. The Porsche works driver had charged up to second after taking over from team boss Ashburn and was holding position behind Keen in the sister car, only for misfortune to strike that also spells the end of the Demon Tweaks duo's slim championship hopes.  

Nick Tandy and David Ashburn took the spoils, but only after
Keen was forced to pit with five minutes remaining. (SRO Media)

“It’s always nice to get on the top step of the podium, I won’t deny that, but it’s a bit of a downer for all the guys because although we won the race, it could have been so much better,” reflected Tandy. “We’d discussed before the race what would happen if we were in front of them and it was quite clear that Trackspeed want the championship more than a race win. Their car was still in the championship hunt, so there was never any question of challenging them – it’s a real shame. We just wanted to finish side by side for a nice picture.”

Keen’s rotten luck dropped him to the tail of the lead lap in tenth, promoting the two Motorbase Aston Martins to the podium with Michael Caine surviving heavy late pressure from Rory Butcher. Omani Ahmad al-Harthy starred in the opening half of the race, making a perfect start from third on the grid to lead the opening lap, whereby he steadily set about building a cushion over Minshaw, Jeff Smith and Colin White, who would fall out of contention when he made contact with a slower GT4 car.

While Caine didn’t have the pace to match the Porsches after the stops, their second place ensures the championship will go down to the wire, although a fourth-place finish for Marco Attard means the Ecurie Ecosse driver needs only a 7^th place at Donington to clinch the title.

Sims and Attard combined to salvage an unlikely fourth place
that puts the latter firmly within reach of the title. (Own photo)

It was a result that decidedly looked unlikely after qualifying down in eighth and with a 20-second success penalty looming over them from Spa, a safety car caused by Andrew Howard pushing Derek Johnston into the gravel Clearways only making their task more difficult. But the telling pace of Alexander Sims – setting fastest sector times on his outlap and the race’s fastest lap on his first complete tour – meant the BMW was able to claw its way back into contention and into an eventual fourth place after a fantastic battle with Matt Griffin’s Ferrari.

“Quite honestly in my eyes that’s a win for us today,” a delighted Sims said afterwards. “That’s literally as good as we could have done I think. The first half of the race went well initially; I don’t know what was up with Howard and Adam but that obviously played into our hands and Marco did a solid job. But with the safety cars, it seemed like everything had just gone against us, but after the stop somehow we were in tenth position straight away – it was just a fight from then on. The dice with Griffin was fantastic, he really made me work for that, I’m very pleased that I could get him in the end for those extra few points and a bit of pride I guess.”

Crucially, fourth for Attard also put an end to Beechdean’s hopes of defending their title after a nightmare race that had looked so promising after qualifying four tenths clear of the rest. Howard dropped back immediately on the opening lap with a brake problem that first reared its head during the warmup and had lost two laps by half distance after a spin and the contact with Johnston. Jonny Adam would eventually bring the car home out of the points in 16^th.

“The pace wasn’t bad, but we just lost power steering through left handers, which was tricky,” explained Adam. “The championship is out of reach now, it’s just one of those things. We’ll try to finish on a high at Donington and get second if we can, we still have every chance. Motorbase aren’t far in front and they’ll have a pitstop penalty as well.”

Tom Onslow-Cole and Paul White were on course for fourth place
before problems held them back in the latter stages. (SRO Media)

Griffin was content with fifth given his 75 kilo weight penalty which destroyed the tyres, ahead of Alex Macdowall and Phil Dryburgh's PGF-Kinfaun Aston Martin and the misfiring Strata 21 Aston of Tom Onslow-Cole and Paul White, which had earlier ran ahead of Sims.

“We just had something trip on the car unfortunately,” said the former BTCC racer. “Our car was involved in quite a big accident at VLN last week and it’s been fully rebuilt since then, but I think something has just earthed out and it was an intermittent issue for the rest of the race after that. I was on the back of Matt [Griffin] and just biding my time. It’s frustrating, but at least we finished.”

That’s sadly more than can be said for Triple 8’s Warren Hughes and Jody Firth, who had ran as high as fourth on their first outing in the BMW following their switch from Trackspeed before a wheel detached on the perennially unlucky Hughes’ outlap.

“Jody had a fabulous opening stint to get up to fourth from tenth on the grid; we talked about the possible placements of the car for the first lap and what the likely scenarios would be and he absolutely maximised it,” said the Geordie afterwards. 

"We were going to be in very good shape once everything settled; we were first ones in, which would have given me a couple of laps on fresh tyres compared to the other guys, but the first lap out of the pits we lost drive coming out of Druids, then the wheel parted company by the time we got to Hawthorns. I’m gutted for Jody and gutted for the team - we’re just looking to Donington now to finish the season on a high.”

Adam Carroll and Gary Eastwood finished just short of catching Onslow-Cole in eighth, ahead of a recovering Keen who passed GT3 debutant Ryan Ratcliffe on the final lap. Northern Irishman Carroll hopes that BOP changes will be forthcoming at Donington, with Ferraris having struggled across the board this weekend.

“We worked hard for that, I gave it everything it’s got,” said Carroll, who also served a success penalty after finishing third at Spa. “We weren’t the quickest car out there by any means but we were very consistent right to the end. That’s the best we could really do today – it’s a truer representation of where we actually are than Snetterton was. The Aston is still too quick, it’s too good in the high-speed and too quick in the straight line, so a little more speed please and then we’ll be much closer.”

Wylie and Giddings all but wrapped up GT4 with victory at Brands Hatch. (SRO Media)

In GT4, Beechdean Motorsport’s Ross Wylie and Jake Giddings took a dominant victory to extend their championship lead over chief rivals TF Sport, with a little bit of help from the safety car. With a 20-second success penalty to serve after victory at Spa, Andrew Jarman only had to stay within range of Wylie in the first stint to inherit the lead, but all that changed when the safety car picked him up instead of the Beechdean driver to effectively gift Wylie a lap’s advantage over the rest. 

With the pressure off in the final stint, it was then left to Giddings to bring the car home in one piece ahead of a disgruntled Jarman and Devon Modell. Fox Motorsport’s Jamie Stanley and Paul McNeilly completed the podium finishers.

“The safety car helped massively because we could just bring it home in one piece,” admitted Giddings. “We’ve just got a bigger points lead now, so it’s more of a safety blanket for Donny. Hopefully if all goes to plan we should be in good form.”

Sims is also understandably looking forward to the finale; while he can’t win the title himself, having skipped Snetterton to race in the Nürburgring 24 Hours, delivering the championship for Attard would be the perfect way to finish his first season as a BMW factory driver – although he won’t count his chickens just yet.

“It would be lovely to end with a top result and [Motorbase] have obviously got a penalty for the next one, so right at the moment it’s looking good. But you’ve just got to look what happened to Howard and Adam this time, it’s not a given at all; we’ll have to approach it exactly the same way and do as well as we can.”

This article also appeared on Racing.GT.