Bob Barnard Track Engineering

So the boys from Texas have sent Bernie a check for $35m for next years race fee, $10m more than Tavo's deal. So where is Tavo in all this? Good money after bad. The Track President says ticket interest is strong, it had better be, but what are the ticket prices? Nothing on the web site to say, but if it is what Americans are used to paying it will probably just cover the extra fee, let alone running the event and paying back on the track construction.

Austin is not alone, The World Motorsport Council confirmed the 2012 calendar with Austin, Bahrain and Korea, so let's see which of these actually make it. Lots of little adjustments to the sporting code governing F1.

Joe Saward has a great blog today, so log on and have a read: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

The driver "silly season" is closing. Lotus, i.e. Renault, has Raikkonen but Petrov looks in trouble. Trulli could make way for Ricciardo as he does not have a seat for 2012 yet. Pic is in at Marussia with Timo Glock. No one is safe at Sahara Force India or Toro Rosso. HRT has Pedro de la Rosa and an empty seat. Williams have an empty seat, so who will go there if Rubens doesn't get to stay? Lots of good drivers with no seat, including Grosjean. 

Finally getting some sense of order in my life. The trip to Orlando for the Professional Circuit Owners Convention went much better than Germany, great speakers and great information to a quality audience. Finally unpacking the house but still waiting for a load of our stuff to be delivered that National failed to fit on the truck!

FOTA seems to have imploded while I was away, Bernie is laughing all the way to the bank over this. Bernie got control in the first place by telling the teams association, of which he was a member through owning Brabham, to let him do the deals. Have they such short memories? As I always say, do not fight over the last piece of pie, make a bigger one.

How do supposedly smart businessmen get themselves into the mess that is the US F1 GP in Austin? Bobby Epstein as the money guy presumably is smart as he has made enough money to build the track, but is not smart enough to do the research on people who try and get Bernie to change his terms for a GP. When I worked for Kenny promoting the US Motorcycle GP at Laguna in 93 Bernie ran the bike GP's, and the contract was 44 pages and Bernie would not change a single word, not even for his mate Kenny. So good luck Bobby, especially as you want Bernie to agree to your contract.

Bernie says he will not replace Austin in next years calendar, and Bahrain and Korea will happen as he has a contract. Well he had a contract this year for Bahrain and that did not happen, and Korea may think it cheaper to default than lose another $36m next year. I have to laugh when I read in Autosport that the Indian GP will be with us for a long time. Just long enough for Jaypee to work out they will never make any money. 

I have been MIA the last week as my wife and I have moved from Phoenix to Raleigh NC, and drove 2250 miles in three days, about 31 hours, and basically never got off I 40. All this in a 13 year old Honda Accord with 150,000 miles on it, never missed a beat, amazing car! Unfortunately the movers are not so amazing. National Vanlines managed to do everything wrong that we told them the last movers did, and then some, so no I do not recommend them to anyone, and no we did not take the lowest quote.

I am off this week giving three presentation at the Orlando Professional Circuit Owners Convention and moderating the whole of the second day, so will be a tired boy at the end of it. Looks like a great convention though, and then the PRI show the day after. 

Oh yes we had the last F1 GP today in Brazil, and no surprise a Red Bull won, and Webber finally broke his duck for 2011. I have no TV or internet yet so could not watch, but let's hope that in 2012 someone can give them a run for their money.

While I've been off in Germany at the Professional Circuit Owners Forum it would seem that between Bernie, the Texas State Comptroller and Tavo the "Circuit of the Americas" and the F1 GP have sailed off into the sunset. Not unexpected as any regular reader would know, none of this made any sense from the start.

The Forum was hurting from the current recession and the numbers were down, but the quality of most of the presentations was not. Some really good information being presented. If you can get to Orlando for the US Circuit Owners Convention on the 29th & 30th of this month you will not be disappointed in that respect.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are getting to the end of the 2011 season with one more F1 race to go. Still a few snippets of interest though. It seems the British Serious Fraud office is sniffing around Bernie's little deal with Gribkowsky, that must be fun for him. In a similar vein the Venezuelan Congress is reported to be investigating how the sponsorship deal with Williams was done without their blessing.

Suzuki has pulled out of MotoGP making next year's field even thinner, and the man in charge of DORNA who run the series says something has to change. Well your running it so what's the problem. Oh, maybe you are the problem that got us here in the first place.

India is receiving a lot of press at the moment, which is I guess why they wanted the race. Coverage is a two edged sword though if you have the corruption and poverty that India enjoys. The following is a report from Fox News:

I have said for a while that the Pit Pass site is Bernie's PR company, and now I am convinced of it. Following the rumors about Austin the piece today makes you want to throw up in your corn flakes.

http://www.pitpass.com/44849-Is-the-US-GP-on-track-to-transfer-promoter-rights

Now I agree the promoter does not need to be the track owner, I have been there myself with Eastern Creek. In fact the smart move is to have them separated so if one goes broke they both do not go down. So it seems Tavo is a genius, the world authority on F1, Bernie said so if you read the last line. Hellmund is "F1's Captain America and Full Throttle synonymous with the sport in Texas." Funny, but when it was announced he was doing a deal my motorsport friends in Texas had never heard of him.

But he has promoted NASCAR and football. Really? Eddie Gossage promotes NASCAR in Texas as far as know, and who promotes football? At NFL level the teams run their own show with the League, and Colleges do their own thing. So at what level were these promotions?

It gets worse, no one has put together State funding and obtained both F1 and MotoGP events. Well the Australian GP Office is State funded and has run both F1 and MotoGP for some years. So has Malaysia, Hockenheim, Suzuka, Silverstone, Barcelona, Jerez, Jarama, Magny Cour, Paul Ricard, Donnington in the famous 1993 F1 race, Spa, and I could probably go on. All you need is money.

Work is apparently about to resume on site, there was a hiatus while the books were sorted, but now they are all go again, with fill due to be trucked to the site. Hang on, haven't we just been moving lots and lots of dirt, and now you need more? Surely they mean road base? 

I'll let you draw your own conclusions from the article, but as I said, it will be interesting to eventually find out what is going on in Austin.

The big news of the day is that, not surprisingly, Jenson Button has re-signed with McLaren, and looks set to end his driving days there. As others have said, Jenson is driving better than ever and is assuming the role of team leader.

The other story getting a lot of air time is the victory of an English Pub Owner in the EU Court of Justice over her using a foreign channel subscription, Greek actually, to show football without paying Sky's exorbitant rate. The implications for Sky and F1 are not clear as this may only apply to pubs and clubs, but it has Bernie out and about again as you will read in the other Pit Pass story, "Has Bernie lost the plot?" When they run these stories I do have to question if they are Bernie's mouthpiece, or do they have a split personality?