Bob Barnard Track Engineering

As a few have commented already the FIA and presumably Bernie have lost all contact with the outside world. On the day that news reports tell us of a 14 year old boy killed in clashes with police in Bahrain,

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/08/31/bahrain.death/

the World Council of the FIA unanimously approve a calendar moving Bahrain up to be one of the early GP's just so India does not have to run in the heat. The whole idea of leaving Bahrain till the end was to give them time to sort themselves out, not that that was likely, so why just casually move it back to the beginning? And we lose Turkey from the same calendar, nice one guys.

Meanwhile Charlie has been to India and is very happy with the circuit which is good news for a change. Now to just keep the farmers off it. We have another new track here in the US, the Baltimore Street race for Indycar and ALMS is this weekend so it will be interesting to see how that works. There is a virtual drive on Motorsport.com:

http://www.motorsport.com/#/all/video/main-gallery/?s=2&i=2&id=1209

I will reserve my comments until after the race.

MotoGP from Misano where Loris Capirossi has just announced his retirement after a record 324 races, winning the 125 and 250cc World Championships along the way, the first at my event at Phillip Island in 1990. If you have not seen that race find a copy! Wayne Rainey will also be in Misano, the track that ended his career 18 years ago, what a tragedy.

Elsewhere Gribkowsky's attorney wants the charges dismissed for lack of substance, but the Prosecutor is having none of it. Even if the shares were valued correctly there are still a lot of unanswered questions here.  

In the absence of much else, and after reading Murphy The Bear's latest missive, my thoughts turned to Audi. Now Audi ran in the ALMS for most of the last decade under various guises of teams, mostly Champion from Florida. Audi now say that it is not likely to race in ALMS next year as it needs Audi North America to step up with some money. I can understand Peugeot not bothering with anything but Sebring or Petit, they have not sold cars here for years, mores the pity. It is only when these two turn up that ALMS really draws a crowd.

Now stop me if I'm wrong, but Audi seems to sell a  lot of cars in the US. So why is Audi NA not interested? They can sell enough without using racing as advertising? Maybe now they are one company they do not want to compete with Porsche? Americans do not like diesels? They should, and perhaps showing a diesel winning is the best advertising. Anyone from Audi NA saying anything publicly? It seems we are not even to see the Audi R8 in GTC next year.

We have the Portugese MotoGP to look forward to this weekend and Capirossi is to ride. These guys are tough. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo breaks his collar bone and it sounds like he is out for most of the season. GP riders would just plate it and be back in a couple of weeks. It's not his throwing arm. I know, he will get hit and hurt it again, but so could the GP rider. Doohan rode with a broken leg for most of a season, shades of Bret Favre.