MOTORSPORT: F1 abuzz on all fronts `

Mark Webber is at the centre of a premature F1 driver silly season, while the sport's ownership is a hot topic too as the championship resumes in Europe

Ferrari-Webber link doesn't ring true
An enthralling Formula One season now hits full throttle, after a three-week break, with three races in just 22 days amid huge speculation about Australian driver Mark Webber's future -- and the ownership of the sport.

This weekend's Turkish Grand Prix, the seventh in Istanbul, may be the last because of repeated poor attendances and concerns over the costs.

It will be followed by the Spanish GP in Barcelona on May 22 and then the crown jewel, Monaco, on May 29 -- the two races Webber dominated from start-to-finish last year.

Those wins made him a huge star and he was a contender for the world title with Red Bull Racing right until the last race of 2010.

Now all the talk is about whether Webber's future is at Red Bull beyond this year. Or elsewhere, particularly Ferrari.

This author had a strong feeling a few months ago that this would be Webber's last season in F1, although now it is not hard to see him continuing -- and after that 18th-to-third drive in Shanghai three weeks ago why shouldn't he?

He may yet win GPs this season, and let's hope so, but perhaps he is coming to the end of the road with Red Bull. He said overnight he had three options: "Stay here, stop or drive somewhere else -- which is probably unlikely.

"It's obviously down a lot to how I feel about things and we'll see how we feel later in the year."

It will also be about who wants him. There is the perception that Sebastian Vettel is the team's favoured son, but -- patriotism aside -- he has that vital smidgeon of talent and youth on his side over Webber. It was in Turkey last year that relations between the pair exploded.

It is now 10 races and almost 10 months since Webber won a GP in the best car(s) in the field. He is still a brilliant F1 driver but perhaps, if he wants to continue next year, his future is elsewhere.

The name Ferrari keeps cropping up. As we recall it, it was F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone who first raised the prospect of Webber joining the revered Italian stable.

Webber too has mentioned a couple of times that the romantic idea certainly has appeal.

Yet if Ferrari, the sport's most successful team with the most coveted cockpits, wants a replacement for Felipe Massa, who is contracted until the end of next year, would it seriously go for one already in his mid-30s?

Renault's factory team, using the same engines as Red Bull, makes more sense as a final team for Webber.

Robert Kubica was the obvious target for Ferrari if it wanted a new teammate for Fernando Alonso, until he crashed in a rally and perhaps damaged a hand so badly he might never return.

Nico Rosberg, at 25 and having outshone Michael Schumacher for 15 months at Mercedes, must be favoured ahead of Webber if Ferrari decides Massa's time is up.

Like Massa, Rosberg's existing contract runs until the end of next year, while Webber is on year-to-year arrangements now.

The new factor in the driver market is the Force India-Mercedes team's rookie Scotsman of Italian origin, Paul Di Resta, who has been so impressive in just three GPs that he is being touted as the next Mercedes factory driver.

One of the big question marks is on who Red Bull would replace Webber with if he were to move or retire.

Neither of its secondary team Toro Rosso's race drivers, Sebastian Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari, is worthy of a seat in the premier team.

And Australia's man in waiting, Perth 21-year-old Daniel Ricciardo, who has been groomed through the Red Bull junior driver program, is hardly likely to be installed straight into the world champion outfit as a race driver.

Far more likely is that Ricciardo will serve an apprenticeship at Toro Rosso, for which he already drives in the Friday morning practice sessions.

The ironies of the latest speculation regarding the second Ferrari seat are that Massa has been quite impressive in the past couple of GPs -- considering the lack of challenge from this year's Ferrari team -- and, going into Istanbul, has the best record of anyone in Turkey, having won there three times.

Turkey and Spain will see the arrival of major technical updates on the F1 cars.

Red Bull is confident it has its KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) sorted at last, which is ominous for its rivals -- even McLaren, whose Lewis Hamilton beat Vettel in China, and which has been the only team anywhere near in the same league this season.

Ferrari, without a podium yet this year, and Williams, without even a point, will have new wings front and rear.

We reported here midweek that Williams' Australian technical director Sam Michael had fallen on his sword and would depart at the end of the year.

The team's Brazilian driver Rubens Barrichello, a veteran of more GP starts than any driver and a man of great integrity, has told of his sadness at Michael's demise, saying the engineering chief had been asked to do far too much work for one man.

"I was sorry to see the announcement," Barrichello said. "I've been working with him since the Jordan days and was happy to reunite with him in Williams.

"I think Williams need changes, obviously. There are too many people doing too many jobs right now... Sam is doing five or six jobs, so he's overloaded.

"It's too much for a single human being and he ends up doing half of his capability on his own job because he is doing other things."

Barrichello said his views had been sought on Michael's role but he was disappointed his advice wasn't sought on broader changes at Williams.

"The rest I got to know through the press, which I would have liked to get consulted on as well," he said. "That's something that needs change... Williams need to work as a family, not too much of trying to keep it for themselves and then going to the press.

"We need to work a little bit more on how we approach things."

Unity is an issue on the broader agenda of F1 right now. We have reported a couple of times recently on indications that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is interested in leading a syndicate to buy F1.

First there was mention of Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim being a potential associate, then confirmation of the family company of Italy's Agnellis -- who control Fiat and thus Ferrari -- as a partner.

CVC Capital Partners, the private equity firm that owns the majority of F1 but leaves Bernie Ecclestone to run it, has said its stake is not for sale -- for now. That leaves the door open for another, more formal approach. There would be hurdles to jump, but -- if they could be cleared -- CVC would be a seller at the right price.

Ex F1 team owner-turned-commentator Eddie Jordan talked this week of there being a lot of posturing at the minute on F1's ownership -- and Ferrari is a key player in all of that.

While on the one hand it is in unison with Ecclestone in opposing the switch to 1.6-litre, four-cylinder turbocharged engines from 2013, it is turning up the heat on him and CVC in linking with News on a possible takeover bid.

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali told Germany's Auto Bild Motorsport this week, as negotiations begin on a new Concorde Agreement for the sport's commercial operations, that "a marketing partner is needed".

"It can be CVC once more, but it must invest in F1 and develop," Domenicali said.

The racing of the past 15 months, and particularly most recently in China, is the best marketing F1 could have.

It is baffling that anyone in F1 could have considered CVC to have been a marketer, let alone "once more". However, Domenicali had some other interesting philosophical perspectives.

"We must make sure our sport becomes interesting for young people," he said. "F1 must speak their language, use their technologies, internet, tablets, social forums. And remain comprehensible for the audience.

"F1 is interesting for Ferrari only if these points are taken into consideration. And we must avoid the rules to change too often.

"We need stability, on top of having GPs in important countries for our sales -- first of all in the USA."

F1 has never gained -- or certainly never maintained -- serious traction in the US, and indeed did itself enormous harm with the farcical six-car GP at Indianapolis in 2005, but is supposedly venturing to a new, as yet incomplete, venue in Austin, Texas.

McLaren team principal and F1 teams association chairman Martin Whitmarsh has the American market in perspective.

"The USA does not need F1 -- we need the USA," he said. "And if we plonk ourselves down and believe the USA will reignite its enthusiasm for F1 we are wrong.

"F1 has to work harder."

These are especially interesting times for F1.

Ecclestone is 80 and won't be around forever. Ferrari is the centerpiece, knows it, and plays it for all it is worth.

But the sport, and the business, needs to be wary of one team calling its entire tune.


Blasts from the past with turbo engines
The man who managed 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve's F1 career, Craig Pollock, is planning a return as the sport's fifth engine supplier.

Pollock is heading PURE (Propulsion Universelle et Recuperation d'Energie), which is keen to produce the "greener" turbo engines favoured by the governing Federation Automobile de l'Automobile (FIA) but which Ecclestone and Ferrari so oppose.

Among the partners in PURE is Mecachrome, the French engineering company which supplied Renault-based engines to British American Racing, founded by Pollock, as well as Williams and Benetton in the late 1990s.

Pollock's key technical adviser is Christian Contzen, who has been described as "the architect of Renault's success as an engine supplier in the '90s".

Cosworth shares Ferrari's reservations about the 2013 engine formula, and Mercedes apparently is cooling on it -- although before the Australian GP in March its motorsport chief Norberg Haug boasted of the company's support for "green" initiatives.

Renault, with turbo-hybrid engines set to propel as much as 70 per cent of its road-going models within four years, is the great supporter of the proposed F1 turbos.

"The proposed rules are road-relevant and completely in line with Renault's road car strategy," its F1 managing director Jean-Francois Caubet said.

"We have already started design concepts on the 2013 engine, as this dovetails with our plans in road cars."


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