Bob Barnard Track Engineering

German F1 GP starts tomorrow. With Schumacher back and a quarter of the field German drivers they still can't sell it out, sold 61,000 of 75,000 and do not expect to sell them all. But they do hope to cover expenses! Nice, build the track and do all the work and hope to cover expenses. Are you reading this Tavo? Let's hope we have another good race, although I prefer the old layout, funky as it was with the long forest section.

You have to love Bernie, stirring up FOTA again, and Monaco. He says he sees himself as a "fireman" putting out fires, and if there aren't any he starts them!

Red Bull have dropped Brendon Hartley from their support, not surprised, Brendon came on strong when he was younger but seems to have stalled lately. Maybe if he had a haircut he might go quicker? Vergne has been rewarded for his driving in F3 with a step up to FR 3.5 alongside Australian Daniel Ricciardo. Great article in Autosport the other week, still catching up after the move, on why the current crop of drivers are so strong, and the programs like the Red Bull junior drivers are given a lot of the credit.

Here in AZ things are heating up, and not just the temperature. Logo almost there and lots of great ideas being thrown around. At this stage of a project there are always more things you can do than there is time, the trick is to know what to do first and what to wait to germinate further. You want to tell the world, but that is not smart until we have things sorted and locked in. In a way what we are planning is unique, so we have to develop our own ideas and see what works.

As I said a while ago, who arranged this timetable? Tour de France, World Cup Soccer, MotoGP in Spain, Daytona, IRL at the Glen, you get the picture. I'm trying to do some serious writing, and I'm not talking about this blog. I guess Wimbledon is finishing as well. Glad it is actually a holiday on Monday, but the Tour goes on.

Mark Webber did a promotion with the Red Bull F1 in Parliament Square, London, and wowed the crowd. There is nothing like seeing a F1 car on streets you know and where you can get close to appreciate just how fast they accelerate and brake. That is what is so astounding about these cars that sets them apart from say NASCAR, where the top speed is the same but it takes them two laps to get there. That is why I love street tracks, provided they are done right.

Elsewhere the other Schumacher finally seems to have come good in the DTM with his first pole. The Norisring track is interesting, it is on the old Nazi Party rally grounds. Looks a bit like the old Avus circuit in Berlin. If you have never seen that check it out, it had an amazing banked 180 degree corner that puts Daytona to shame. Over at Daytona Brian France is talking about going green with a bit of ethanol, provided Sunoco agree, and possible changes to The Chase again to include some sort of knockout. I had that idea a while ago, to make sure they all go for it. Start with the top ten and whoever is the last of those ten drops out, so even for the last race you do not have to win it, just finish in front of your competitor. What do you do if they both crash?

Australian Daniel Ricciardo won the Formula Renault 3.5 race in Hungary and still leads the Championship. The next Mark Webber? Joylon Palmer returned to the winners circle in the F2 Championship and is leading that handily.

Big crash during practice at The Glen. Viso ran over the curb at Turn One and could not get it back in time and hit the wall on the exit head on. I said a few weeks ago that I was unhappy about some aspects of that track when there seems to room to move barriers back, and that is one of them. It is also down to the asphalt run off behind that curb that allows drivers to try and drive out of an off without lifting.