Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Only twelve hours since I wrote Sunday's blog, and nothing really happened since then. Max Mosely has come out of retirement to tell us that Ferrari must be punished more than the fine, like losing the points from the race, which I actually think is a better penalty. Ferrari say they will take the FIA to court if they do get another penalty. That will provoke a nice fight I'm sure.

The Autosport feature on iconic tracks from each of the last six decades comes out on the 26th, with Adelaide the track of the eighties, so be sure to look for it. I wonder if Spa makes the list? What would your six tracks be?

After watching as much as I could take of the ALMS offering of the race from Mid Ohio yesterday, which was not much, I asked my mates Tony Dowe and Tom Kjos their view, just to make sure I was not over-reacting. Most of you were saved this latest idea from the brains trust. It looked and sounded like a movie, aimed at the complete idiot who knew nothing about the sport, and mimicked a NASCAR offering featuring the team radio traffic. As Tony said "They are trying to attract the “casual” viewer that has little or no knowledge of what racing is about for the lowest possible cost, they will kill it!"

Following my comments in yesterday's blog about Dorna and Moto3 I had to ask is motorsport dying as a spectator sport? Tony in his usual fashion was blunt. "Yes, thanks to the suits and accountants who think they know what the public wants." It seems they most care about what their bottom line wants, what the TV wants, what the manufacturers want, and least of all about what we want to watch.  With even NASCAR struggling to fill the stands you have to ask where is this going? OK, some will say it is the economy, but can they tell me that soccer and football attendances are down? What about the TV figures, it does not cost most folks to sit at home and watch.

Is motorsport turning into a "hobby" for enthusiasts? For years the joke has been that to make a small fortune in motor racing start with a big one, but it is true for almost everyone except a fortunate few, and very few, who make money at this, so yes it is a hobby. That would account for the rise in country club tracks to cater for this growing number that want to drive fast and not go racing, at non-spectator tracks. For most series you may as well say they are non-spectator events now, look at Grand Am.

FOTA has just staged a fan town hall meeting so at least they recognize the need to address what the fan wants, but their hands are tied for most of the changes that we want by the "powers that be."

There seems to be general agreement that the Czech MotoGP was a pretty boring event. So what went wrong? Motorcycle GP's used to be the most exciting form of racing. We know what went wrong. The manufacturers wanted four strokes, Dorna wanted to make it "cheaper" and no one invested in young talent, so now when the Doctor retires it is basically done. Oh Yes, Valentino and Yamaha et al confirmed what we all knew, he is going to Ducati. That will spice things up for a season, maybe, but what then.

In other news Mr. Schumacher is blaming the car for all his woes, I guess it steered itself into Barrichello? Bahrain is to revert to the original track layout for next years GP, it seems you can have too many corners after all. Korea has delayed the obligatory race meeting prior to the F1 GP, so they are cutting this fine, although with a street race like Adelaide we had no "dress rehearsal." Jean-Eric Vergne clinched the British F3 title with a win in the third race at Silverstone, so presumably is free to go off and try his hand at something faster.

Saw TV footage of the desert race that claimed the lives of eight spectators. To say it was totally out of control would be complimentary. It looked like a cross between Spring Break on Daytona Beach and the Portuguese round of the World Rally Championship. People right next to the course  and on it, not that the "course" was defined in any way. How do the organizers, and I use the term loosely, live with themselves?

The flexible front wing saga is growing given the dominance of Red Bull at Hungary today. Shades of the ground effect days when the FIA mandated a 6mm clearance below the car to reduce the venturi effect under the car. They could only measure it when it was standing still, so the boys came up with suspension that lowered the car when out on track, pretty hard to measure it at 100 mph! Now clearly the front wings on the Red Bull, and the Ferrari, are touching the track at times, so they are moving when in motion, even though they pass the FIA static test.

Ideas of how they are doing this vary between laying up the carbon fibers in different directions in the wings or the floor somehow moving. It demonstrates the problem the FIA has, and always has had, of making rules that are clear, cannot be got around, and can be enforced. They are up against the smartest guys on earth it seems at times, who do nothing but sit and scheme how to beat the rules, legally of course. Bernie always said it is better to have no rules, so you cannot go around them, just decide yourself what is fair or not. Sort of what we did with the Spanish Motorcycle Championship back in 1993, keep the rules simple. No works bikes, we all knew who had them, no carbon brakes, and no trick tires, again we knew what they were with the help of the tire technicians.

The importance of ground clearance on these cars was brought home to me in Adelaide in 1986. For the first race we did not repave the main straight, it looked really good until the cars went down it at 200 mph. There was a long "hump" halfway down it that made the cars bottom out, and their titanium skid plates sent a shower of sparks skyward every time, very dramatic, but made us look bad. So between races we planed and repaved it. Come the race and the cars are sending sparks out all around the track. I was distraught, how could the track have moved that much under traffic in just one year! Saturday I woke up, the track was so smooth they had lowered the suspension so that the cars were basically sliding along the asphalt, which one of the engineers quickly confirmed.

Some surprises in qualifying at Hungary. Button not making it out of Q2, but Hamilton 5th. Confirms what we know, Hamilton will wring a cars neck, not always pretty, but effective. Button strokes it around, which has worked for him often, so let's see what the race brings tomorrow. Rosberg qualifies 6th, but his world champion team mate cannot do better than 14th. Yamamoto brings up the rear, how long can this go on, or should I not ask? Some good drives by rookies Petrov and Hulkenburg, both out-qualifying their more experienced team mates. This track is notorious for lack of overtaking, so tomorrow could be very boring, unless the Red Bull pair put on a show, or Vettel makes a mess of the start again.

Spa 24 hr going on as I write, but a long way to go, and it is raining. It is Spa after all. Love that race track.

Still waiting for the projects web site to go live, so you will have to wait another day. Remember, manana, which I learned in Spain means "not today."

A last word to Bob Varsha. I would like to think you read my blog, but thank you for the periods of silence today to just listen to the cars. See, that was not so hard was it?

I am a very fortunate man, a wonderful wife and so many great friends. My Mother once said that I had no friends, what she meant was where I was living at the time, and it was true, but I told her I had hundreds of great friends, they were just spread all over the world! Facebook tells me I have visited over 650 cities on five continents, so you get the picture.

What is truly great is that in the way of good friends we do not need to talk every day, or see each other for years, but we can reconnect as if we have never been apart. I first met Steve Hallam when he was working with Ayrton Senna in Adelaide in '85, and we have reconnected now we both live and work in the US.  And I continue to make new friends courtesy of the internet, with this blog connecting to people in over 45 countries.

Apparently Mark Webber is happy he and Vettel can be friends and will now have parity of equipment and strategy. We will see as we are in Germany this weekend and who would you want to win? Rain made for an interesting first practice with Sutil quickest and some of the big names making mistakes, especially Hamilton who took all four corners off the car. Button struggled with the new diffuser, but apparently was running on full tanks to look for a race set up and finished fifteenth fastest. Alonso ended up just in front of Vettel, with the Mercedes boys going well with Nico just in front of Michael yet again. McLaren will have a lot of work to do Saturday to make up for today's problems, and are still deciding whether to keep the exhaust diffuser for the race. As usual rain has made for an interesting weekend, except for Mr. Yamamoto who is a second slower than his team mate and last, nice one HRT.

Lots of racing this weekend, ALMS at Lime Rock, MotoGP at Laguna, and the end of the Tour de France. NASCAR is at Indianapolis with Jacques Villeneuve making a cameo appearance. It took them a few days but NASCAR has finally penalized both Edwards and Keselowski for their contact last weekend, about time.

On the Arizona front we now have a logo and I will share it with you when we go public in a week or so. Waiting on the promo video and we can now finish the web site with the logo, but it will evolve with the project.

How did you like the beer bottle on the track at Valencia? Promoter said he did not think anyone threw it or it would have broken, now there's a nice image! So it rolled out there through the wall? Or was one of the marshals drinking it? "It could happen anywhere" he said. Well I have been watching GP's a long time and I've never seen it. When I have run races I made sure there were no bottles on the site and most times try and stop cans. Sell sodas and beer in cups, harder for the people to get drunk that way anyway, and stops the potential for some idiot to throw it. I annoyed the beverage sellers of course, but Oh Well, that 's just me. It seems they are more concerned about the track not providing much in the way of overtaking, as they should be. It will be interesting to see what their proposed solutions are.

The fallout from the weekends race continues, with the Spanish press beating up the story about Alonso's and Hamilton's comments. They really do not like Lewis do they? Lewis should not be beating their favorite son. I lived there for a year and never felt that there was a racist element, but after what happened at Barcelona a couple of years ago, and the continuing jibes from the press you have to wonder. Ferrari should look at the Rosberg incident at Singapore the first year where of my memory is correct he crossed the blend line on the pit out and had to do a drive through, but like Lewis he had a few laps to build up a cushion and did it without losing a place and finished well up.

FOTA is working with an environmental audit group called Trucost to reduce the carbon footprint in F1. No surprise to me but the actual racing is a very small component and while they are looking at more efficient engines for 2013, the main thrust is in how they work as a whole. The target that they have at the moment is 12% reduction by 2012. Maybe that will keep the greenies happy, but I doubt it. The nice thing was that, as I have been saying, Trucost acknowledged that racing is already about efficiency and the teams are already doing well.

Interesting that Melbourne F1 GP has announced a bigger presence for the V8Supercars at next years GP, with three races totaling 500K. Maybe they have just worked out that Adelaide is pulling a bigger crowd for the V8's than they are getting for the GP?

Talking of Australia, it seems my mate Wayne Gardner has spoken up about the state of GP racing and current riders. http://www.waynegardnerapproved.com.au./wr14.htm. Stirred up some comments, like he should keep quiet he's too old to know! I for one totally agree as you will know from reading this blog. When Wayne speaks people should listen.

Phil Hall has also been conversing with me about new tracks being built in the US, and "rich men's playgrounds." It is an unfortunate fact of life that the spectator event driven business model for tracks no longer works. The sanctioning fees and cost of staging races is higher than the potential spectator draw for those events. The model that does work is to build a facility for members, yes rich guys, who want to drive fast and not necessarily race, and can pay for the privilege. Now, once you have the facility, then you can look to accommodate clubs to come and race, renting the track and enjoying the nice facilities a country club offers. Some tracks here like New Jersey or Virginia Raceway also stage spectator events, but that is not what is driving them, if you excuse the pun. At the moment it is a US phenomenon, but there are a couple in Spain, and it will spread. The only two spectator tracks built here recently are Miller Park and Barber Motorsports park, both built by rich guys, who then put their name on it, what does that tell you. Other than that you need a Government to pay for it, shades of Eastern Creek.

That is why we are building a Country Club here in Arizona. Had a great meeting last evening with the local Corvette Owners Club and everything we do confirms that the location and the type of facility are correct, and the demand is there.

To finish off today, why is it that there is so little news on a daily basis other than for F1? Where are the series promoters? How can you expect the public to know when events are happening if you only promote the week before, and lose interest between events, especially for a series like ALMS that has not had a race for two months! When will they learn that you have to work at this 365 days a year, put out stories and information. I know I harp on Adelaide and PI, but they were great models of how to do this stuff, not just because of my involvement but because of the other great staff. Terry Plane at the Adelaide event had a story in the daily paper every day for a year. Did not appreciate him at the time but what he did was amazing.