Bob Barnard Track Engineering

There are a couple of interesting articles about CVC, the F1 rights owner, and Bernie, and the sale of the shares. CVC has instigated its own enquiry into the events surrounding the purchase of the shares from BayernLB and the supposed bribe paid to Gribkowsky. At the same time it is reported they are head-hunting a new Chairman for the holding company, Delta Topco. This is a non-executive Chairman, so presumably Bernie is still in control, but it points to a lack of confidence. Bernie may not be able to put a woman in charge if he is not calling the shots.

The other piece is in the Pitpass web site where Der Spiegel has done its own digging and come up with its opinion that the shares were not sold below market value. There was an auction with two other bidders and CVC's offer was the highest, so how could Gribkowsky rig the sale to assist CVC? This is Alice in Wonderland stuff. If Gribkowsky did not get a $50m bribe for this deal, where did the money come from and why? Bernie is going to have a field day with the magazines if this lot is true.

The World Motorsport Council met today and decided to give Bahrain till May to decide if it wanted to reschedule the race. All seems quiet to us, but there is a piece on Pitpass from a private citizen in Bahrain describing the ongoing and escalating demonstrations. It would appear that Libya has taken the spotlight off Bahrain whose news organizations are being prevented from covering the demos.

Other WMSC decisions involved the allotment of extra tires, both for Friday practice as "evaluation" for new Pirelli's, but also additional tires for the race. Does someone have a lack of confidence in how long the Pirelli's are going to last?The WMSC has also asked the "Circuit Design Group" to look at how exisiting tracks can be changed to increase overtaking. About time someone woke up that it's the tracks, stupid. Again Pitpass has a nice editorial piece, especially the last two paras:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=43052

In Barcelona we have the first day of the last F1 test, as well as Arsenal playing in the Champions League. At least with the soccer we will know who wins. Today Webber is doing a lot of laps with the quickest at 1 min 22.5 secs, but most averaging 1 min 29 secs, so we can see how the tires are going to slow things down. Button is the only man anywhere near this time, most are 2-3 seconds off with the Virgin 9 secs off the pace! McLaren had everyone going with a weird nose and front wing which they took off after lunch and said it was just to measure the forces on the front wing. Ferrari had another of those "filming days" yesterday at Barcelona and featured a new exhaust layout, but these are all so tucked away it is hard to see what each team is doing. So nothing changes, thank goodness Melbourne is just under three weeks away and we will finally get real on who is doing what.

I talked before about headline writers and today there is a classic. Not sure if it is meant to be funny but judge for yourself. "Mosley refuses to be beaten over quirk." What's funny about that you say? His "quirk" is he likes to be beaten! It reminds me of an old and bad joke. Masochist: "Beat me, beat me!" Sadist: "NO." The article is about Mosley's push to have private lives made sacred from media exposure following his little episode with a few young ladies in a cellar.

You can't keep Briatore down can you, now he is a medical expert. "Briatore visits Kubica, predicts recovery." Well I'm sure we all feel better for that Flavio. It is safer to ask who has not been mentioned as a replacement for Robert, I even saw a comment that Mark Webber could consider taking the seat. Now that is an idea even my fertile brain had not considered.

Of course the whole "he should not be doing this" saga rolls on. Kimi has wrecked his car in just about every rally since he left F1 and still gets away with it. Mark Webber goes mountain bike riding and breaks his leg etc, so leave it out.

The other big news is that HRT unveiled an graphic image of the new car. Not the new car you note, just the great new graphics by the Hollywood designer. And yes it looks nice, but does it exist and will it be any better? We have 32 days now to the first race and two test sessions left, one of which starts this week, and they still have only one driver. In a further statement HRT has decided to skip the Jerez test and "support Pirelli" at a filming session in Monza. With the new graphics? What are these people thinking?

In other news, the German weekly, Der Spiegel, has picked up where Stern left off with a story about how much CVC paid for the F1 rights and how much the bank received, which apparently were not the same. Guess where they say the rest went? I have to ask, is this uncovering of information the result of ongoing research, or do they know the whole story and they are teasing it out like a serial to get us to buy the paper?