Bob Barnard Track Engineering

So the boys from Texas have sent Bernie a check for $35m for next years race fee, $10m more than Tavo's deal. So where is Tavo in all this? Good money after bad. The Track President says ticket interest is strong, it had better be, but what are the ticket prices? Nothing on the web site to say, but if it is what Americans are used to paying it will probably just cover the extra fee, let alone running the event and paying back on the track construction.

Austin is not alone, The World Motorsport Council confirmed the 2012 calendar with Austin, Bahrain and Korea, so let's see which of these actually make it. Lots of little adjustments to the sporting code governing F1.

Joe Saward has a great blog today, so log on and have a read: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

The driver "silly season" is closing. Lotus, i.e. Renault, has Raikkonen but Petrov looks in trouble. Trulli could make way for Ricciardo as he does not have a seat for 2012 yet. Pic is in at Marussia with Timo Glock. No one is safe at Sahara Force India or Toro Rosso. HRT has Pedro de la Rosa and an empty seat. Williams have an empty seat, so who will go there if Rubens doesn't get to stay? Lots of good drivers with no seat, including Grosjean. 

Finally getting some sense of order in my life. The trip to Orlando for the Professional Circuit Owners Convention went much better than Germany, great speakers and great information to a quality audience. Finally unpacking the house but still waiting for a load of our stuff to be delivered that National failed to fit on the truck!

FOTA seems to have imploded while I was away, Bernie is laughing all the way to the bank over this. Bernie got control in the first place by telling the teams association, of which he was a member through owning Brabham, to let him do the deals. Have they such short memories? As I always say, do not fight over the last piece of pie, make a bigger one.