Bob Barnard Track Engineering

It did not take BMW long to take its' first win in the DTM. Just the second race, and starting from pole. Dr. Ulrich of Audi chose to go to the DTM race rather than the WEC at Spa, so it tells you where his priorities are, or is it he knew Spa was a shoe in? It should have been expected as BMW have not exactly been away from racing, just the DTM when it got to be a tin top version of F1. Racing its' road cars across the globe all these years just meant building one to DTM specs, hiring a couple of drivers with DTM resumes, and off we go. Great to see though, three great manufacturers fighting it out and drawing huge crowds. Probably more at the first race than at the German F1 GP's.

Good to see Robert Wickens, the young Canadian, getting a drive in DTM, not your normal route to F1, but a couple have done it.  American Alexander Rossi is also getting his break and will get a Friday drive at Barcelona in his role as test driver for Caterham. That will be interesting to see.

Elsewhere normal service resumed with Stoner winning in Portugal, but Rossi continues to struggle with the Duke, and whatever happened to Spies? A long chain of discussion on Facebook recently about Ben, but it is hard to understand how his team mate Lorenzo can be challenging for the win, and the Tech 3 pair can be beating him easily on non-works equipment. Ben was the only team mate to get the best of Mat Mladin when they raced in the US, but that was Mat's retirement year, so not a good yardstick? Something has obviously disappeared from Ben's arsenal, perhaps his confidence?

I was able to watch the Spa 6 Hour round of the WEC courtesy of Audi TV on the internet. Had the radio Le Mans boys commentating and picture was great, and no commercials. Despite the obvious outcome of an Audi win we saw an intriguing race, with the Diesels beating the Hybrids, who have some issues to resolve around the four wheel drive. Interesting that Toyota has not followed this path after having tried it. Of course Audi has long had a "Quatro" so marketing may drive the racing, so to speak. Nice to see that did not influence the outcome of the race though with the diesels being allowed to win on merit. Le Mans may be a stretch though. Good races in the LMP2 and GTE classes, with the GTE being won by less than a second after six hours! 

Oh yes, we had in-season testing once again with all the F1 teams except HRT going to Mugello. A very nice track, but much more a MotoGP track than F1 with all those sweeping corners. Grosjean in the Lotus was quick with Kimi declining the opportunity to run, as did the two McLaren boys. Not really much to tell as usual with testing and not all the top drivers. We will have to wait for Barcelona.

The "who is going to replace Massa" game continues with Mark Webber being the flavor this week, although it seems Red Bull are keen to keep him after the recent race form. In a similar vein the new Chairman of CVC has said he needs to be able to replace Bernie "within 24 hours." Presumably not the next 24 hours, but the ones after they carry him out of his office in a wooden box as he has always insisted they will have to do for him to relinquish control of F1.