Bob Barnard Track Engineering

There are two related items today about the economics of staging an F1 race. Valencia it seems has had enough of subsidising Bernie with four years left to run on their contract. Bernie of course will not let them out of the contract so they are trying to find someone to take it over, which you would think would be easy with the number of countries who want one. If you cannot make it pay in an Alonso mad country like Spain where can you? It is costing them 30m euros, about $45m, to stage the race, including Bernie's fee, which must be a cut rate, and they are only recouping 10m euros from ticket sales, so they lose about $30m a year. Why could they not work this out before they did the deal?

On a similar note Alain Prost is frustrated that France does not have the political will to "buy" a GP. He knows they will lose 8m euros, even with a reduced fee from Bernie, and no government wants to spend that, on top of building a new track. Austin, are you listening? So if Alain could work it out beforehand why is Valencia surprised?

It seems there might be moves afoot to put Daniel Ricciardo into Buemi's seat at Torro Rosso. Not sure that is a great move for either party, one season in GP2 would probably be better for Daniel than being thrown in the deep end with a mid-field car. I know Vettel made the transition from Torro Rosso, but I would not like to bet my future on that happening again. Look at the Hulkenburg situation for a driver without a big personal sponsor.

Interesting that it has been announced that HKS, an architectural firm, has been added to Tilke for the Austin Track. Whatever you say about Tilke's tracks, his architecture has been good, so why bring in another architect?

No, not the things that go around in your engine, The Confederation of Australian Motorsport. They are having a major bust up with the Australian GP organizers, particularly one Ron Walker, mate of Bernie's. Ron is complaining that CAMS is charging the GP too much for providing the race control and marshal services now that they are losing so much money. He says they are a monopoly and should be made to bid for the work like all the other "service" providers. So CAMS is threatening to tell their mates at the FIA not to let Ron have the race next year if he does not stump up. Ron has gone to Abu Dhabi to tell his mate Bernie and the FIA what a nasty monopoly CAMS are. Hang on, isn't the FIA a monopoly? And aren't they the ones who dictate that there can only be one recognized motor sport body in each country? That other well known monopoly, Bernie, says he is the only one who can say if Ron has a race or not. This is getting funnier by the minute.

My contacts in Australia have been keeping me abreast of CAMS and their goings on. Unfortunately like most of these bodies they come to think they exist for the good of the staff, and not the members. This is basically a big club, a "Confederation" of States and clubs. There has been ill feeling between members and CAMS since before I left Australia, and a rival body has been set up ostensibly to provide an alternative to CAMS insurance, but has grown to be a problem for CAMS, which has just said it will ban any senior official who works at a rival event. Shooting yourself in the foot time.

Now when I ran the Motorcycle GP for Kenny at Laguna Seca the AMA did not want us to run at that track on that date, conflicted with one of their National Rounds! What is important here? Fortunately Bernie and DORNA controlled motorcycle GP's with the FIM rubber stamping, and I did not need AMA's approval, did not ask for it and did not get it until halfway through the year when they rang me. I arranged the race control staff and marshals which suited me, I could pick who I wanted. So, if I could do that with an FIM race, why cannot Ron do it in Oz? He probably can, CAMS are saying they have to provide these people because of their expertise, but they cannot have a monopoly on that can they?

Is it just me or does the Abu Dhabi circuit look like a container terminal or industrial park this year? When I saw it today during practice it seemed to have lost its' "glitter", which is all it had last year. It just seemed a dusty parking lot with a lot of light towers, a lot like the Port of Miami container terminal where I worked back in 2003.

I know Alonso says he does not care if he wins the Championship by seven points or less, but it will be a very cheap title if it only cost Ferrari $100,000 to win it. I said at the time that Germany equated to $14,000 a point, cheap at the price, but a title, priceless. The Stewards should have taken the points away, that is the only thing that made sense, then we would not have this situation.

There can only be two stories today. Rossi rides the Ducati, which has Rossi fans lathering at the mouth. Could they really not have painted the bike red? Lot of discussion about how far off the pace he is, but it's November, so what does it matter. Vale will go off and have his operation and come back all new and refreshed, then we will see. Did Jeremy and all the Yamaha boys all just change shirts overnight as well? Sorry to hear Stu Shenton has been let go by Suzuki, he is too good to be walking the street, but then again aren't we all?

The other is Red Bull and team orders. The team owner says there will be no team orders, he would rather lose the championship than win it that way. Well said, but there are a couple of people asking if it were Vettel who was in front of the two on points would the answer still be the same? A few others have echoed my thoughts that Red Bull would rather Alonso have it than Mark Webber. Talking of Alonso, I would have thought he would have done well to keep his opinion to himself on team orders. No one commented on my questions as to team orders in motorcycle racing?

Murphy the Bear has his latest offering about the state of sportscar racing and the omission of the Petit from the Intercontinental Cup. I think we would all like to know what that is about, sanction fee, TV rights, dates? The TV schedule for the ALMS is whacko, I'll be watching on live steaming and listening to Radio Le Mans I think, if there is anything worth watching. Sounds as if the GT class will be the thing, even more than this year.

What is going on with the whole Lotus thing? Do the Lotus Group i.e. Proton and the Malaysian Gov't really dislike Tony Fernandes that much? Why would they sponsor the Renault team when by stopping the stupid fight over the name they can have the existing team running around with their name on it, or is it an embarrassment at the moment? That is likely to change, and with a Renault engine. As Mike Gascoyne said "If they want to advertise their road cars, why spend so much money on it?" he told Auto Motor und Sport. "With us, they could do it free of charge."

Then there is the rumor that Virgin might be bringing in Russian backers, Sir Richard's exit strategy?

What to write? Red Bull, will they or won't they? I say they won't, how can they after their stance all year, and I still say they do not want Mark to win. If Alonso wins by less than seven points does he deserve it? I say no, but champions in the past have taken over others cars to win let alone been allowed past on the track, so who is right? I think you can make a case of team orders for the manufacturers championship as that is a team trophy, but then again that would not make any difference who's in front, so you pays your money and takes your choice. Have we ever seen team orders in motorcycle racing does anyone recall?

I've not mentioned Sol Real lately as we have been going through a series of meetings with potential collaborators, another meeting this afternoon, so until we finalize things I do not want to say too much.

How great to see a Williams on pole again! I must confess to a soft spot for Sir Frank's Team, as I think most people have. Mine started when Alan Jones won the championship and then to see how Sir Frank has battled his own personal problems and the struggle to stay competitive is an example to us all. Let us not forget it was Hulkenburg and not Barrichello that did it, well done Nico, and what a great way to repay Sir Frank's comments about your ability of just last week. Maybe it was the confidence boost he needed. Interesting qualifying session with nothing between the Red Bulls again, and if Nico had a wet set up then he will probably go backwards fast in the race. Interesting to read his comments of Friday that they would be lucky to make it into Q3.

Hard to see Lewis doing anything other than trying to stay in touch and Alonso, who knows, but both of these guys need the Red Bulls to break again. Mark looked in a determined mood, and it looks more and more like my predictions over the last few months may come true and Mark will leave at the end of the season. Horner's "Mark needs to focus on the job" sounds like a "shut the **** up" to me. Let us hope tomorrow is dry and we can see a straight fight.

On the engine front there are more opinions from Cosworth and Renault that the proposed 2013 engine regs need to be very tightly framed to prevent a runaway spending war, or leave the V8's alone. All is not settled.

HRT has a new partner to help with the money as was suspected, so let's hope for a better season next year. The talk of using the Toyota chassis does not gel with me as the rules change again next year. I think the discussion with Toyota is probably more about using their engineering consultancy they have set up at the old F1 base. I can be wrong though, after all I did not pick Hulkenburg for pole.

Stoner took pole in Valencia so we should be in for a good race tomorrow with Lorenzo, who despite being a Spaniard, says he does not like Valencia. Spain is a bit like Australia, not so much a country as a collection of States. Nice to see Checa managed not to be slowest, just. But he is getting closer to the top lap times.

In Zuhai the Peugeots start at the front. The really interesting thing at Zuhai was the announcement of the Intercontinental Cup calendar for 2011. No Petit, just a "race outside Europe TBA" in October? Sebring is listed. In the GT class the big story is the Porsche Hybrid qualifying second, although it does not actually qualify for points.