Bob Barnard Track Engineering

I like Monza. It is crazy fast with chicanes as interruptions, and some great corners we don't see too many other places. The Parabolica and Curva Grande, and I like the combination of the two Lesmos, something I have wanted to replicate. It shows you do not need a lot of corners to make a great track, in fact less is more so to speak. Too often we see corners put in for the sake of it.

Nothing seems to slow down the Red Bulls. Going on this afternoon's times they are going to dominate again, much to the Tifosi's disgust. McLaren seemed somewhere this morning, but Ferrari are trailing with Massa faster of the two again. On the option tire and low fuel the times look quite equal, but when they were out on race fuel loads the Red Bulls looked a second a lap in hand. Still, early yet and we will see what Saturday brings.

At Silverstone we have the Intercontinental Cup for Le Mans cars this weekend. Peugeot snuck in a fast lap to top the timesheet ahead of the two Audis, so not much has changed there. What is interesting is the Rebellion driven by Jani and Prost the younger are less than a second off the fast time. Given the breaks the petrol cars have in the race they could cause an upset. Again let's see if they can continue this tomorrow. Ferrari look to have it all their own way in GT Pro, with America's Tracy Krohn doing well in the GT Am ranks. There is an amateur who takes his racing very seriously.

Going back to F1, Pirelli have asked the FIA to get involved to enforce the camber limits following the issues at Spa, particularly with Red Bull. Not that they became a problem, Red Bull won, no one blew a tire, so what's the problem? How many more parameters of the car design and set up are the FIA going to proscribe? The safety of the drivers is a concern for everyone of course, no less for the team involved, so why the need for the FIA to set the limit? What else that the teams do with set up, wing size or angle, brake cooling etc, are they going to limit? And before anyone writes in I know they set parameters for most of these, but the team can still go for an extreme set up within that. The tires are just the most visible. Trulli is still going off about his steering, how about making that a standard part too! Where is the line between competition between the teams designers and engineers and spec racing? Indycar anyone?