Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Been a busy day today on the Sol Real project. Web site has been updated and looks like a version we can go live with as long as the other guys are happy. Video needed a lot of "tweaking" to put it kindly and rewrote the story line and script yesterday afternoon. Spent the morning with the editor and I think we have it back on track. Both of these will be works in progress, as starting any project like this is difficult. There is no track to film or photograph, so we have to try and use stock footage, which for country club tracks is almost non-existent. Hopefully Thursday we will have a revised video to look at.

Moved furniture into the hanger we are going to use as our presentation area, and installing A/C. "Toys" will go in early next week and some suitable posters and photos and we will be ready for a dress rehearsal. We progress.

More e-mails overnight from foreign parts, and at least two could actually turn into projects. Documents coming for a new expert witness commission, and the attorney is actually coming to see me this time. Being involved in these cases is a salutary experience and shows just how dangerous motor sport is and just how you cannot take your eye of the ball for a second when running a track. It is like when I design a track, I have to keep telling myself that anything can happen and probably will at some point in time at each and every point around it.

In the wider world, the Ferrari debacle still reverberates. Bernie has come out and said whatever the teams do should be their business, because to him it is a business, but businesses succeed because of their customers, so ignore their views at your peril. There is a short piece on Last Turn Club about the decline in the attendance at the Brickyard 400, and how this is a sign of a serious loss of interest in NASCAR by its fans, and NASCAR needs to pay attention.

Murphy the Bear has his latest offering on www.murphythebear.com, always worth a read, and interesting forecast on who will have an ALMS race next year. In other news Mini announces it is coming back to world rallying, a place where it made its name in the 60's. Villeneuve and Durango are confident in their bid for the next F1 team slot, and Austin announces the site for the track and a major backer in Red McCombs. Tavo says the USGP was successful when it was run at a permanent circuit, i.e. Watkins Glen, but that was long before Bernie was running things and when the cost of the rights was the prize money.

What a strange weekend, the only race that did not end with someone really upset was the MotoGp at Laguna. Not a great race, but great result for guts and determination on the part of Valentino. Cannot imagine how hard the corkscrew is with a broken leg, although as I said before it is the shoulder that is giving him the most trouble. using more arm strength to turn the bike and he hurt his shoulder anyway. Roger Hayden at least finished the race which is more than a lot of the full time riders did, and was not last, so well done.

Ferrari are being hammered about the German GP debacle. I guess on balance my feelings are that if Alonso was faster he should have overtaken Massa without team orders, but we know how hard that is to do with cars so closely matched. From Ferrari's viewpoint I would have thought the team championship would be the prime target, and they got the same points for that whichever way round their drivers finished, so clearly there is a number one driver in that team. So, where do I stand? Let them race. It is going to be potentially a very stressful time for Ferrari until they know what the World Council is going to do, they have been known to strip a team's points for the season.

Over at Indy I guess Montoya thinks there were team orders at Ganassi, with his team mate being sent with two tires and him being delayed to take four and losing the race. I love Montoya for his passion, but then getting caught up in an accident seems to have been a "red mist" moment, although I did not see it so cannot really comment. Must be interesting in some teams debrief sessions. Managing these elite athletes is a special talent, and at the moment McLaren seems to  be the only ones doing it well, although they had their problems too in 2007. Maybe Martin Whitmarsh is the new Phil Jackson. If you do not know Phil he is the Coach of the Lakers Basketball, and was Michael Jordan's coach at Chicago. Known as one of very few men who can make egos work together. One funny story, he ran what he called the "triangle offence." When he went to the Lakers the players said they were confused as they could not work out which two of them could sit down.

Over at the IRL I watched the Edmonton race with the sound off as I was not really interested, but, like most I suspect, I am mystified how Castroneves was blocking? No wonder he was hot after the race, that was a terrible decision. About the only thing interesting about the whole race, except why there are walls right on the edge of the asphalt at an airport?

On the home front it has been an interesting morning with three e-mails about overseas projects. Never know where any of these end up, usually nothing happens, but it is nice to know people are out there finding me. Interesting the projects that get thought up. It is difficult to know whether just to give them a fee for what they are thinking of, or to try and redirect them to what I think probably works. It is also summer in most places that want to do something so they are on vacation and things take longer. That is a little of what is going on here in Arizona, but schools go back soon and things will get back in full swing.

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.

German F1 GP starts tomorrow. With Schumacher back and a quarter of the field German drivers they still can't sell it out, sold 61,000 of 75,000 and do not expect to sell them all. But they do hope to cover expenses! Nice, build the track and do all the work and hope to cover expenses. Are you reading this Tavo? Let's hope we have another good race, although I prefer the old layout, funky as it was with the long forest section.

You have to love Bernie, stirring up FOTA again, and Monaco. He says he sees himself as a "fireman" putting out fires, and if there aren't any he starts them!

Red Bull have dropped Brendon Hartley from their support, not surprised, Brendon came on strong when he was younger but seems to have stalled lately. Maybe if he had a haircut he might go quicker? Vergne has been rewarded for his driving in F3 with a step up to FR 3.5 alongside Australian Daniel Ricciardo. Great article in Autosport the other week, still catching up after the move, on why the current crop of drivers are so strong, and the programs like the Red Bull junior drivers are given a lot of the credit.

Here in AZ things are heating up, and not just the temperature. Logo almost there and lots of great ideas being thrown around. At this stage of a project there are always more things you can do than there is time, the trick is to know what to do first and what to wait to germinate further. You want to tell the world, but that is not smart until we have things sorted and locked in. In a way what we are planning is unique, so we have to develop our own ideas and see what works.

Heat, we love it. Had breakfast outside this morning, no humidity and a great temperature. Place is looking like home already. This is what I remember from my years in Alice Springs, yes the sun is strong if you are stupid enough to stand out in it, but shade is great.

Had a very good session yesterday getting up to speed on the project. Visited with the architect on the graphic renderings of the track layout and buildings for the presentations. This is going to really surprise people, and not just in the US! This will be something really special, and the track layout I like more every time I look at it. Logo is just about there and web site will launch in two weeks. There will be a blog page on it with the latest development news and this blog will also be added to it. I will continue under this log in as well so you can take your pick.

San Antonio is looking to build a first stage of their track all in the base of the quarry, so hopefully that project will move forward. Still no news from Singapore or Saudi, but one of the expert witness cases is moving again. The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, but exceedingly fine, as someone once said.

Carl Edwards latest move at the weekend is not winning him many friends in the paddock, and the media are asking if the NASCAR move to allow more freedom for these guys to hit each other has gone a tad too far. Someone is going to get really hurt here soon, not that I want to take all the "rubbing" out of the racing, just the purposeful hit to take someone out.

You have heard me talk about Jeremy Burgess, the man behind Valentino Rossi, Mick Doohan and countless other Champions. Well it seems Jeremy is not likely to go to Ducati with Rossi, wishing to stay at Yamaha. Perhaps he sees Lorenzo as the future? Of course he plays down his value, it is a team thing, they can do without me. Yeh right Jeremy, I have been around you for twenty five years so tell that to someone else.

Jacques Villeneuve's F1 team bid has been rumored to be backed by Gadafi's son, with ties to the state owned oil company Tamoil. He denies it, but it reminded me of when I was promoting the USGP at Laguna for Kenny back in 1993. We were having trouble interesting US companies in sponsoring the race, and a "French Connection" said he had a deal for us, but could not tell us who it was. OK, the money was good, but as we got close to the race I said we had to start making signage so I needed to know who it was. He told us it was an oil company. Great, I thought, Total. Well, they then said they were working on State Dept. clearance! That ran up a few red flags. Iraq? can't be. No he said it is OK,  it is Tamoil, from Libya! In 1993 we were not so friendly as now with Libya, so I could see some definite downsides to the USGP being backed by a Libyan oil company. Grid girls in yashmaks? Libyan suicide squads parachuting from the sky? Needless to say we said thanks, but no thanks.

Lastly, there is a great piece on the Jaguar effort in the ALMS and Le Mans on the Last Turn Club page, http://lastturnclub.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=712&Itemid=51. I believe this is what I have been saying for a couple of months now. Sad.