Bob Barnard Track Engineering

It did not take BMW long to take its' first win in the DTM. Just the second race, and starting from pole. Dr. Ulrich of Audi chose to go to the DTM race rather than the WEC at Spa, so it tells you where his priorities are, or is it he knew Spa was a shoe in? It should have been expected as BMW have not exactly been away from racing, just the DTM when it got to be a tin top version of F1. Racing its' road cars across the globe all these years just meant building one to DTM specs, hiring a couple of drivers with DTM resumes, and off we go. Great to see though, three great manufacturers fighting it out and drawing huge crowds. Probably more at the first race than at the German F1 GP's.

Good to see Robert Wickens, the young Canadian, getting a drive in DTM, not your normal route to F1, but a couple have done it.  American Alexander Rossi is also getting his break and will get a Friday drive at Barcelona in his role as test driver for Caterham. That will be interesting to see.

Elsewhere normal service resumed with Stoner winning in Portugal, but Rossi continues to struggle with the Duke, and whatever happened to Spies? A long chain of discussion on Facebook recently about Ben, but it is hard to understand how his team mate Lorenzo can be challenging for the win, and the Tech 3 pair can be beating him easily on non-works equipment. Ben was the only team mate to get the best of Mat Mladin when they raced in the US, but that was Mat's retirement year, so not a good yardstick? Something has obviously disappeared from Ben's arsenal, perhaps his confidence?

I was able to watch the Spa 6 Hour round of the WEC courtesy of Audi TV on the internet. Had the radio Le Mans boys commentating and picture was great, and no commercials. Despite the obvious outcome of an Audi win we saw an intriguing race, with the Diesels beating the Hybrids, who have some issues to resolve around the four wheel drive. Interesting that Toyota has not followed this path after having tried it. Of course Audi has long had a "Quatro" so marketing may drive the racing, so to speak. Nice to see that did not influence the outcome of the race though with the diesels being allowed to win on merit. Le Mans may be a stretch though. Good races in the LMP2 and GTE classes, with the GTE being won by less than a second after six hours! 

Oh yes, we had in-season testing once again with all the F1 teams except HRT going to Mugello. A very nice track, but much more a MotoGP track than F1 with all those sweeping corners. Grosjean in the Lotus was quick with Kimi declining the opportunity to run, as did the two McLaren boys. Not really much to tell as usual with testing and not all the top drivers. We will have to wait for Barcelona.

The "who is going to replace Massa" game continues with Mark Webber being the flavor this week, although it seems Red Bull are keen to keep him after the recent race form. In a similar vein the new Chairman of CVC has said he needs to be able to replace Bernie "within 24 hours." Presumably not the next 24 hours, but the ones after they carry him out of his office in a wooden box as he has always insisted they will have to do for him to relinquish control of F1.

This is getting serious. I did not write a blog yesterday as nothing much is going on, and today is not much different. I am not alone, Joe Saward has had time off since Bastille Day, the 14th, and today only mentioned the Michael Waltrip law suit against Mike Coughlan of "spygate" fame and the Williams team. Mike was working for Waltrip in NASCAR, presumably an old colleague from the McLaren team brought him in, but has since taken up the offer from Williams after Sam Michael gave notice. If that's all the excitement then we are in trouble.

What is serious is Rossi only being able to qualify in front of a stand in replacement for Capirrosi, 16 th out of 17. Missing Jeremy Burgess? Perhaps that is who is the real "doctor." After all Jeremy is the one constant in winning championships since Wayne Gardner's days. Best wishes go out to Jeremy and his wife, we hope her health issues get resolved happily. Meanwhile Stoner was happier with the tires today and put it on pole again. Good to see Pedrosa back in form, and the two Yamahas are not that far off the pace, so it should be a good race.

Both BMW and Audi have released photos of their 2012 DTM cars, and very slick they look too.

And there is still not much going on. Sounds like a fun FR3.5 race at the Nurburgring with Canadian Wilkins just beating Australian Ricciardo, with American Alexander Rossi going out on lap one on a damp track after qualifying on the front row. The usual suspects you might say.

British F3 at Brands Hatch looks set to be just as fraught with the top ten all within half a second between Svendsen-Cook and Magnussen. Spengler continued his domination of qualifying in the DTM for this weekends race at the Lausitz circuit.

Over in Spain the WSBK are at Aragon with Melandri on pole for a change, and Biaggi and Camier on their Aprilia's in front of Checa, I wonder if they can keep it up in the race?

With that, see you tomorrow.

Now before you all write and tell me that is old news, this is the next generation. Wayne's two sons, Luca and Remy. This was their first time at a track where their World Champion father won the first Australian MotoGP back in '89, and Luca won one race in the rain and finished second in four others. Nice going. Remy had a bit more torrid time of it but still managed two seconds, two thirds and a fifth. Great future for these two I think, but Dad needs to lift his game as a mechanic. Still, Wayne did beat them when they took time out to go kart racing. The boys loved the Island, who wouldn't, and cannot wait to go back.

Over in Italy at Monza, another great track, the cream rose to the top with Ricciardo leading Alexander Rossi home in the second race. I loved the teams explanation why there were "loose bolts," apparently not just one but all of them. The rule only says "tight," but not how tight. Classic motor racing, if you do not define it with a torque value how tight is tight? He did not win the argument though.

A lot is being made about News Corp not being allowed to buy F1 because it will have a conflict of interest, being a media company. How short the memories are. How did all this get started? When Bernie decided to make a bunch of money and sell it to the Kirsch Media Group out of Germany. That's right, the Kirsch MEDIA Group. So what has changed in the last twenty years? If it was good enough then why not for Rupert and Co? I'm sure Rupert can put in place enough cut-outs, like Bernie and the boys have now, to put a fire wall between the company owning F1 and Sky. And why are they only carrying on about Sky? What about Fox and Speed in the US, and all the other stations he owns. We pay for Speed via the cable here in the US, so define "free to air."

Casey won at Le Mans, no surprise there, but Rossi third? That was largely thanks to Simoncelli and Pedrosa coming together and Lorenzo having a bad day, but the Ducati seems to be coming good. The Simoncelli incident earned him a ride through penalty, which has sparked a lot of debate on-line as to who was at fault here. I have not seen anything but the stills, and it does look like Simo did not leave him much room, unlike what we saw at Turkey last week, and he is making a habit of this and making himself very unpopular with his fellow riders. The Tech3 boys did not manage to repeat their qualifying form, and Spies was down in sixth. Marquez finally learned how to keep a four stroke upright and won his first Moto2 race, so look out everyone else if he repeats his form from the 125's.

Rockenfeller won his first DTM race, and about time. It is hard to believe that with all else he has won he has had to wait this long for a good car. Let's hope Grand-Am can bring this series here in 2013. Talking of Grand-Am the race from Virginia started with an hour behind the pace car for rain. Someone finally beat Ganassi and Co, but given how easily Pruit caught the lead car on the last lap I wonder if that was not a set up to try and make the series more interesting. $25,000 reward was posted by Grand-Am for anyone beating Ganassi which received more press than anything else they have done.

Kevin Magnessun won the third F3 race of the weekend at Snetterton after finishing ninth in the second "reverse grid" race with fastest lap of the race.

Bernie made a surprise visit to the reopening of the Austrian track owned by Red Bull magnate, Mateschitz, and told him that even though "Didi" does not want an F1 race, he should have one. Didi probably knows what it will cost him.

There is so little news the web sites are making it up with the excuse it is April Fools Day. What are they going to do tomorrow? What is not a joke is the announcement that the Victorian Government is going to audit this years race. I would have thought they would have audited every years race. Ron Walker says he is confident it will show they did not lose more than last year, and he hopes a bit less. I'm sure the good people of Victoria are glad to know that they only tipped in about the same $50m as last year, and not more!

It's good to see that the DTM have dropped that crazy street race in Shanghai as the last round of their series, both because the track was awful, and second, why would you end your major Championship half way around the world? Send the TV signal instead if you want to sell cars there.

In what must be an April Fools joke there is reported to be ongoing discussions to put Bahrain back on the calendar. I'm sure we could squeeze in Libya while we are in the area.

In Jerez the Stoner/Pedrosa/Honda show goes on where they left off in Qatar, swapping fast times in the two practice sessions. Lorenzo managed to get himself up to third in the second session, and Valentino is showing much better form in the sense of grid placings, but is still a long way off the time of Stoner. Ben Spies seems strangely off the boil.

You would not think the LMS race is on at Paul Ricard, or whatever you want to call it today. The only news I see is from Guy Smith's Linkedin. Still, I suppose if Audi and Peugeot are not there, nor the Aston, then why bother? Is this how ALMS is going to go?

On a final note this "fools day" Bob Varsha believes it is a "joke" that Kimi is going to race in NASCAR. The only joke is you Bob