The curse of Webber: Ricciardo dream in the hands of stewards

DANIEL Ricciardo took Mark Webber’s seat at Red Bull. He may have inherited Webber’s curse as well.

Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo in the early stages of the Australian Formula One Grand

DANIEL Ricciardo took Mark Webber’s seat at Red Bull. He may have inherited Webber’s curse as well, with a stewards’ inquiry deliberating last night whether to strip him of his second place finish in the Australian Grand Prix.

Ricciardo became the first local driver to secure a podium finish at a home since Formula One came to Australia 30 years ago.

In his first race for the Red Bull team, Ricciardo achieved what Webber was cruelly denied in 12 attempts at Albert Park.

But in a a dramatic postscript, Red Bull officials were hauled before race stewards after Ricciardo’s car allegedly exceeded a new fuel limit rule.

FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer referred Red Bull to the stewards after finding that Ricciardo’s No.3 car “exceeded consistently the maximum allowed fuel flow of 100kg/h”.

With the F1 paddock in darkness, the Red Bull garage closed and the crowds long gone from Albert Park, the stewards deliberated late into the night.

Had Ricciardo won this race the 24-year-old would have earned “legendary status for life’’ according to Adam Gilchrist, a celebrated cricketer qualified to make such a declaration.

As Ricciardo’s mile-wide smile on the podium shouted louder than any of his words, second place behind the much faster Mercedes of Nico Rosberg wasn’t half bad.

Ricciardo flumoxed a legion of supporters when he declared from the Albert Park podium that he was “tripping balls right now’’. It now appears his team tripped on the complex new rules introduced this year to reduce fuel consumption.

To complete this race at all was a triumph of sorts, given the wholesale changes that have been wrought on this sport from the end of one season to the start of the next.

It didn’t sound like a Formula One race and to Ricciardo’s teammate Sebastian Vettel, it didn’t feel like the sport he had dominated for the past four years.

While still in his warm-up lap, the German world champion tersely asked his garage on the team radio if it was normal to have no power. He dragged his listless car around five laps of the circuit before watching the rest of the race from the back of the Red Bull garage.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner predicted before arriving in Melbourne that Lewis Hamilton would win by two laps. Instead, Hamilton only completed four, his Mercedes labouring on one fewer cylinders than the six now allowed under Formula One.

With F1 adjusting to smaller, turbo-charged engines, new energy recovery systems, new fuel limits and new chassis requirements, there was no end to what might go wrong.

Yet from the moment he safely slid in behind a shooting Rosberg after the first dramatic corner, it all appeared to go right for Ricciardo. In his first race for the Red Bull world championship team, he drove an unflustered, unflappable race, much of it with the relentless McLaren of F1 rookie Kevin Magnussen looming large in his side mirror.

Alan Jones, the last Australian to win an Australian Grand Prix, joined Ricciardo on the podium to interview Rosberg, whose father Keke won the first race in Adelaide 30 years ago.

When Jones won in 1980, the year of his world championship title, the race was a mix of formula cars thrown together by promoter Bob Jane at Calder Park, north west of Melbourne. The event was not part of the F1 championship and barely rated a mention in world sport.

No one who will soon forget Ricciardo’s name, whatever the stewards decide.