Merc to power Red Bulls wings?

Ullrich was 65 years old last week (and probably had a rotten birthday). Sixty-five is retirement age in lots of countries and the Red Bull Ring incident casts a dark shadow over the achievements during his 21 and a half years in charge of Audi Sport. This has included 13 Le Mans victories. Now, with a rampant Porsche in WEC, a new boss at the top of the Volkswagen Group, Audi’s sporting future is anything but settled. The departure of Ullrich – which would be entirely understandable in the circumstances – would open the way for new ideas and there are more than a few people at Audi who have watched the Mercedes efforts in F1 and think that their company should be in Grand Prix racing, reviving the old rivalry between Mercedes and AutoUnion (Audi’s forefather). If Ullrich is shovelled out of the way as a result of this faux pas in DTM, things could change in Ingolstadt.

Let us not forget that while all this is going on, Red Bull Racing is whining and griping about having to go on using Renault F1 engines for 2016. There is a contract in place, but it is clear that Red Bull does not think Renault is going to improve much next year and Dietrich Mateschitz is grumbling that F1 is no fun at all when you are not winning. Bernie Ecclestone and the suits who follow in his wake are worried that Red Bull might walk away and so is busy trying to talk Mercedes into giving Red Bull its race-winning engines. In the longer term that makes little sense. Some argue that the people who drink Red Bull will all instantly be convinced that Mercedes is cool and will hang up their skateboards, turn their caps the right way round and go and buy themselves a $75,000 Mercedes. The downside is a little more realistic. If someone sticks a Mercedes engine in a Red Bull, there is a serious worry that Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg might get beaten and that would make whoever agreed to the deal look like a real drongo. Whereupon the Great Moustache from Stuttgart will descend, boots flailing, because it will obviously not have been his idea.

The option is for someone to sneak in to Audi and point out the patently obvious: there is a topline F1 team begging for engines, who will help finance engine development. Audi might like doing things in-house, but this is a gift horse and you don’t need to be a dentist to see the potential. Later on, when they have found their feet, perhaps they can launch an Audi factory team, but the key thing now would be to gain a foothold. Audi is certainly in a position to handle such a project. They have plenty of hybrid experience and it would be amazing if the company had not played around a little with some of the F1 ideas in recent years. They also have a chap called Stefano Domenicali working at Ingolstadt and he knows a thing or two about making F1 teams work. He has a very useful contact book and could easily manage an Audi F1 engine programme. Could it be done in time for 2017? Possibly… that rather depends on what machinery they have at Ingolstadt. It is the kind of brave move that a man close to retirement would not embark upon, but if the man close to retirement is no longer there and there is a 52-year-old Audi boss who might one day want to run the whole VW empire, one can see that nothing is impossible.

This is all speculation, of course, but someone in Ingolstadt must be thinking along these lines…

Once the Renault-Lotus deal is done, a domino effect is expected when it comes to engine alliances up and down pitlane.

The headline news would be Red Bull's split with Renault, with the former world champions targeting customer Mercedes power.

Toto Wolff, however, is reluctant, and as he received the Lorenzo Bandini trophy on behalf of Mercedes this week, he even sounded critical of Red Bull's approach.

"Our car and our successes are the result of hard work and huge investments by Daimler," he said. "We built our supremacy, while today there is a team that has decided they do not want to stay with their partner.

"It is a philosophy that is very different to ours. And nothing has happened yet, because we do not look so much at the possible benefits as at the negative arguments," Wolff added.

Mercedes has used all seven of its remaining engine development tokens ahead of the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix with an eye on 2016.

It means drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg will each utilise their third power unit of the season in the W06 ahead of first practice at Monza.

The move represents a tactical change by Mercedes, with the development only available to the works team for now and not customers Williams, Force India and Lotus, as it effectively pulls forward 2016 development.

Although Mercedes has declined to reveal the specific areas targeted by the tokens, AUTOSPORT understands their deployment will help validate the use of a new fuel by supplier Petronas.

For Mercedes, there is no special engine for Monza this weekend, instead the team is exploring a new development direction with consideration towards the future rather than looking for a huge performance leap.

Mercedes also has a new oil under evaluation which, if it proves effective, may potentially follow at some point soon.

The manufacturer believes what it learns and understands now will ensure its 2016 power unit will be more robust, for not only the works team but also its customers.