Bob Barnard Track Engineering

A couple of different thoughts and observations. In Gary Hartstein's You Tube piece he makes the damming statement that "they know and don't care." It reminded me of a recent deposition involving the IKF, International Kart Federation, which is based on the west coast of the US and has no international affiliation. The IKF had at one time, a long time ago, a set of standards for how to set up a track. These got buried, but fortunately a set surfaced. The CIK, the International Kart Commission of the FIA, who really are International, publishes their own standards on their web site. But as I have been told before, "we do not follow them." And why not I ask, they are the only standards available, and published by the world recognized sporting body? In the absence of anything else, why would you not use them. 

The crazy thing is that the CIK also publish rules for how the karts are built, and if you go through the IKF Rule book, even at random, they are more than happy to quote those standards. I opened a random page and it was listed 7 times! Now IKF are not alone in this, but this was such an obvious disconnect. How can you care how the kart is built if you don't care how the track is built?

In the same You Tube Gary talks of Sid Watkins and the group that was formed after Senna's death at Imola. They focussed on the four key elements of safety. The driver's protective gear, the design of the car, the design of the track, and the systems for running events. The first two get taken care of pretty well here in the US, mainly because the driver and car are part of the world scene, but no one is doing anything about the other two, the tracks and the systems. People are dying, and the way to fix it is known, but "they" don't care. Someone needs to care. If not the sanctioning bodies then who? The insurers? They at least are supposed to inspect tracks, but to what standard do they inspect them if none are available? And who is training anyone to run tracks safely? The SCCA has the only program that I know of.

On a completely different subject, Bruton Smith is rattling the cage of the Cabarrus County by telling the world that he is considering moving the fall event at Charlotte to his track in Las Vegas. Now I mentioned the lack of spectators at COTA and Indy, and should have commented on the empty seats for The All Star Race. Biggest night of racing in the world as SPEED tells us. Used to be. Special cars and paint schemes were the norm, but the mighty have fallen and there were lots of spare seats last Saturday. They fiddled with the format again, and lost me very early. Maybe the crowds will go to Vegas, but judging by Bristol and many other NASCAR races this year you would not bet on it.