Two Australian drivers will start a full Formula One season for the first time in 2012 – and one has the other firmly locked in his sights.
Mark Webber will be dodging and weaving to avoid his rising young compatriot Daniel Ricciardo, who has been trained to target the veteran.
Webber had a disappointing season in 2011 after winning four races the previous year and leading the championship but Red Bull continue to embrace him.
Ricciardo has been groomed to inherit one of the seats at Red Bull, either Webber’s or that of Sebastien Vettel, if the world champion were to be lured to another team.
But the reality is that the timing could be ideal for both Australians.
Webber, with 176 starts and seven wins in 10 years in Formula One, has been encouraged by his team to maintain his motivation for this year and next and point the RB8 at the crown which has eluded him.
And Ricciardo has been virtually told that he needs two years with Red Bull’s second team, Toro Rosso, before he will have the chance to step into a race-winning car.
If all goes to plan, Webber will quit at the end of 2013 and Ricciardo will succeed him after two seasons as a potential winner-in-waiting.
But before he can think of that, there is one job Ricciardo must do first and that is to bury his teammate, the 21-year-old Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne.
Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz acted swiftly and ruthlessly at the end of last season as he cast an eye over Ricciardo circulating for the last half of 2011 in a paid-for Hispania Racing drive.
The West Australian’s careful yet on-the-pace performance provided an ideal curtain-raiser for the full-time ride which was to come his way.
He also managed, in practice and testing, to match and on occasion out-perform Toro Rosso’s regular racers Sebastien Buemi and Jaimi Alguersuari, who were both dumped in favour of Ricciardo and Vergne.
The two newcomers will line up for their first Australian Grand Prix with a solid pedigree. Both were British Formula Three champions and both runners-up in the Formula Renault 3.5 series.
But this is a different league and they have been told they will need to display something special, at least by the second year – a “wow” factor, as Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost puts it.
“When we talk about the right stuff for Red Bull Racing, we are talking about a double world championship-winning team, which means the drivers who get elevated there must have the same ability to win races and championships,” Tost said.
“I would say that this wow effect is not so easily manageable in a first season – but it definitely has to be delivered in the second season.”
Tost admits that Ricciardo, with 11 races for Hispania last year, will have the edge over Vergne but neither driver knows the tracks in the first half of the series so the Albert Park round will prove tantalising.
Ricciardo says he and Vergne both intend to be world champions “so it will be a race to get to that target”.
He admits he has an advantage but says Verge will have caught up somewhat during pre-season F1 testing.
Webber, though, is not done.
He has vowed to improve in 2012, and especially wants to make competitive starts, an area which has let him down crucially.
The 35-year-old says he is in a better frame of mind now than he was at this point last year.
“I am looking to have a much better year this year than I did last year – which of course means a lot of winning and improving the start of the season, which is clearly possible,” said Webber, whose only victory in 2011 came at the season finale in Brazil.
“I feel better than I did this time last year, in terms of off the back of the pre-season testing, and it is nice to have the feeling I did in Brazil.”
He is confident that his start-line performance and problems dealing with the Pirelli tyres are behind him.
“I feel better than I did last year which wouldn’t be hard because I was pretty much in the s..t at the start of the year, so this year should be better,” he said.
He also believes the RB8 has some small improvements which should help the team.
“There were just some subtle changes … it wasn’t like a big new package for me,” he said. “It was just some minor aerodynamic improvements to be honest, so we have to analyse those.”
While Webber had a dismal 2011 compared to the dominant Vettel, Red Bull chief Christian Horner believes he can rebound this season.
“He’s training hard, his motivation seems very high and I’m sure he’s going to be fully focused on having a very strong 2012,” Horner said.