Bob Barnard Track Engineering

That's the only way to describe what is going on at Silverstone, although when the smoke clears the "disadvantaged" Red Bulls are 1-2 on the grid. What a farce, it is way beyond a joke. The FIA are looking more and more like a group of indecisive individuals. Following yesterday's backtrack to allow Renault engines to use 50% off throttle engine mapping the "decision" was made this morning to rescind it and make Renault go back to the 10%, while the Mercedes engines can keep their allowance as that decision was made prior to Thursday. So Horner was madder than ever, but if it does not impact your performance what's the problem? Is it really a reliability issue with the cold blowing necessary to cool the exhaust valves? Pretty strange way to design the engine if you have to do that. So are we going to see Red Bull and the other Renault engined teams have engine failures in the race?

After qualifying the FIA have now "decided" that if all the teams agree then they can do what they like from Germany for the rest of the year. Who is running this show, and what is the likelihood of unanimous agreement? If as Charlie says this is not a new rule but an enforcement of an existing one then how do you let them keep breaking it? Surely someone like HRT is going to protest, which is why Charlie acted in the first place.

Where are Ferrari and Cosworth in all this? It is interesting that Ferrari is not asking for special dispensations, that is not their style, so what's going on there? You can sort of understand Cosworth not having a lot of clout, and Williams do not seem to be having problems as Maldanado qualified well.

Paul Di Resta put in another stellar performance to qualify 6th, beating his team mate again, and Ricciardo will start tomorrow even though he was the slowest out there, he still beat the 107% rule. It's pretty silly to see the likes of Eddie Jordan asking Daniel if he wants to be World Champion when he is starting his first race. I thought that was the sort of stuff Australian reporters asked.

McLaren have followed up their Valencia non-performance with another poor qualifying, despite their belief that Valencia was "a blip" and not a true indicator. Obviously they continue to make mistakes like sending Lewis out on used softs at the start of Q3 when there was a strong chance of rain, but all that did was keep him from Button's time, which is still 1.5 seconds off the pace! That cannot be a a happy camp tonight. They are probably praying for the rain to continue, but I'm not sure that is going to help tomorrow.

In other news and rumors it seems Bernie is close to doing a deal with South Africa for a GP, although the local governing body is not keen to see that money going out of the country to pay for it. It rightly wants money spent to develop local drivers and the sport, something other Federations should think long and hard about. Also it was suggested on a couple of blogs this week that Wednesday was the day when Bernie would be charged in connection with the Gribkowsky affair, but that seems to have come and gone.

In Brno Biaggi stole the pole on the shootout, so let's see if he can carry that speed into the race. Mark Aitchison continued his good run by qualifying for the superpole.

At Lime Rock we saw a depleted ALMS field practice and qualify, with three LMP1 cars, which are pretty cars and good teams, but are hardly what we are used to. The GT class is a bit better, 14 cars, and then there are the field fillers. Apparently Scott Atherton was on Bloomberg and managed to avoid giving any of the manufacturers in the GT class a plug, nor Mazda, nice going. 31 cars altogether, so at least they do not exceed the track density under the rules.