Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Hollywood loves sequels, but I am not sure F1 fans do. The situation in Bahrain is worse now than when they cancelled last year, with demonstrators becoming more violent. As many pointed out, that is what happens if you repress reasonable dissent. The Bahrain Government had only to look to Israel and Gazza, or Northern Ireland, to see just two situations where a majority is not represented. If the human rights activist now on hunger strike dies then we can only imagine what will happen.

How did it get to this, again? Who put this race back on the calendar and why? Bernie has to submit the calendar to the FIA, and I guess he has a contract with Bahrain so is obliged to, but could have chosen not to and borne the consequences. As it is the FIA agreed, and we are all now seeing the consequences. Thanks to a major PR campaign the lid was kept on the teams this year, we were all going to go, except now it is a week away and people are being shot and bombs going off and the cracks in that unity have appeared. One hero who did not want to be named said that the teams want it cancelled. Do the Bahrain Government own so much of F1 and the FIA that everyone is scared of them?

Bernie comes out today and says that the teams don't have to go if they don't want to. Really? At what price? Isn't that what the Concorde Agreement is about, you have to show up? None of the drivers have said a word this year, very strange. The only way the safety of people at the event can be guaranteed is for the place to be an armed camp. Unless you have police or troops linking arms along the track fence you are never going to stop someone climbing a fence. Remember the suffragette who threw herself under the King's horse at the start of the last century? More recently the idiot at Silverstone, and apparently someone tried to disrupt The Boat Race last weekend. I've seen the end of the Suzuka 8 Hour when the crowd comes over the debris fence, and of course who can forget the first Phillip Island MotoGP?

That's just at the track, presumably they are not going to camp there so need to be able to get in and out. Do they have that many troops? Far from being a unifying event I can only see it dividing the country more.

The FIA are missing in action , again. They are monitoring the situation. Someone needs to find enough courage to stand up and say "We're not going." Then we need to find some answers as to why someone thought this was a good idea in the first place.

I like Monza. It is crazy fast with chicanes as interruptions, and some great corners we don't see too many other places. The Parabolica and Curva Grande, and I like the combination of the two Lesmos, something I have wanted to replicate. It shows you do not need a lot of corners to make a great track, in fact less is more so to speak. Too often we see corners put in for the sake of it.

Nothing seems to slow down the Red Bulls. Going on this afternoon's times they are going to dominate again, much to the Tifosi's disgust. McLaren seemed somewhere this morning, but Ferrari are trailing with Massa faster of the two again. On the option tire and low fuel the times look quite equal, but when they were out on race fuel loads the Red Bulls looked a second a lap in hand. Still, early yet and we will see what Saturday brings.

At Silverstone we have the Intercontinental Cup for Le Mans cars this weekend. Peugeot snuck in a fast lap to top the timesheet ahead of the two Audis, so not much has changed there. What is interesting is the Rebellion driven by Jani and Prost the younger are less than a second off the fast time. Given the breaks the petrol cars have in the race they could cause an upset. Again let's see if they can continue this tomorrow. Ferrari look to have it all their own way in GT Pro, with America's Tracy Krohn doing well in the GT Am ranks. There is an amateur who takes his racing very seriously.

Going back to F1, Pirelli have asked the FIA to get involved to enforce the camber limits following the issues at Spa, particularly with Red Bull. Not that they became a problem, Red Bull won, no one blew a tire, so what's the problem? How many more parameters of the car design and set up are the FIA going to proscribe? The safety of the drivers is a concern for everyone of course, no less for the team involved, so why the need for the FIA to set the limit? What else that the teams do with set up, wing size or angle, brake cooling etc, are they going to limit? And before anyone writes in I know they set parameters for most of these, but the team can still go for an extreme set up within that. The tires are just the most visible. Trulli is still going off about his steering, how about making that a standard part too! Where is the line between competition between the teams designers and engineers and spec racing? Indycar anyone?

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.  

The FIA have published the rules for F1 for 2014, the year of the V6 engine. There are some very interesting rules here that make you wonder what they are trying to achieve. KERS can now use waste heat from the exhaust, about time, but the cars must use that electrical energy to run in pit lane, no gasoline allowed. Also required is an on-board starter. So, presumably the car must exit the pit box on the KERS energy, and when the driver gets to the end of pit lane start the engine? Now having seen how complex it is to start one of these engines how is that going to work, or is that the real point? The running on electric power follows on from the ACO requiring hybrid cars to be able to run the length of the pit lane on the electric power, but presumably this is a safety reason, they do not actually require it during the race. So what is the FIA trying to achieve here, reducing the fire risk?

Anyway, the on-board starter should reduce the number of problems with stalled cars out on the circuit, so better for the spectators. The other odd requirement is the eight speed gearbox ratios must now be declared and set for the season. In 2014 a driver can change these once, but cannot change back. Now given the variety of tracks from Monaco to Silverstone can anyone explain what this is about? Some of this seems just plain bizarre.

Over at Team Lotus there are also some mixed messages being sent. Chandook is to drive Trulli's car this weekend, which Trulli says it is not a problem. Yeh right. Fernandes says he looks forward to extending Trulli's contract, yet Chandook is saying he hopes to have a full time drive next year. So, is Tony being a good guy and providing the Indian GP with some PR here, preparing Chandok for a drive at that GP, or are they just trying to see if Trulli really does have a power steering problem. Kovalainen does not seem to be complaining about it, and I can't see that he will lose his drive next year as he has out driven Jarno all season. All very strange. 

In other news Abu Dhabi has sacked 61 staff, makes you wonder how many they have to start with? Staff costs must be one of the biggest components of running a track, and I am continually amazed just how many people tracks have. VP's and Directors for everything. Big weekend of racing coming up with the German GP at Nurburgring, last one? ALMS at Mosport, how much longer is that going on, and Grand-Am at New Jersey. MotoGP, or one third of it, at Laguna, with still rooms available in the area. King Kenny will probably be the biggest draw. 

There are a few realignments going on with the F1 teams. Williams announced that they are going to use Renault engines from next year, so Renault increases its hold on the F1 engine market, despite supposedly being down on power. Let's hope this improves the performance of the team. HRT's ownership and management just got cloudier, with a buyout of Carabantes by Thesan Capital, which is a venture capital group backed by Nomura Bank of Japan. They say they will move to base the team in Spain with the current Directors and Team in place. So presumably Colin Kolles is still on the outer. This all begs the question who really is minding the store and who owns it? And will it make any difference?

HRT's arch rival for being last, Marussia Virgin, has confirmed a technical tie up with McLaren Applied Technologies, so look for an improvement there and perhaps Mercedes engines? Cosworth are going to be left with HRT, so it is highly doubtful they are going to invest in a new for 2014 engine with just one customer.

Speaking of engines, Clive Pollock is reportedly going to push on with his proposed engine for 2014 despite the u-turn by the FIA, and Bernie is now threatening to sue the FIA if the 15,000 rpm limit impacts on the poor promoters and their ticket sales drop. Of course his concern is that the promoter will not then have the money to pay the fee to stage the race, but since when has that ever been a concern for him? Bernie is famous for not being fond of drivers in general, they are like buses, another one will be along shortly. That is why he has cleverly promoted F1 as a team sport and built Ferrari and McLaren etc as the stars. It also seemed that promoters enjoyed the same stature as drivers, as there is always someone else waiting to pay him to lose money whenever a promoter wakes up or runs out of it. Bernie has also been having a bit of a verbal spar with Williams CEO Adam Parr. Adam was crass enough to point out that sports such as NFL enjoy considerably larger TV fees and suggested Bernie could be doing better for them all on this front. Bernie of course then pointed out how well Adam was doing on the sponsorship front for Williams. Touche.

The leakage of top staff continues at the other Renault, which isn't, Lotus Renault, with designer Tim Densham reportedly heading for Ferrari. Is everything really well at Renault as Boullier continues to tell us?

I took a day off yesterday so have not commented on the racing. Lorenzo scored a great win at Mugello so perhaps the Championship will not be a Stoner/Honda procession after all. Simoncelli managed to finish a race while Rossi dragged his Ducati up to sixth. In Imola the Peugeots gained revenge for Le Mans with an easy win over the Audis

This is my last blog. Just kidding, but it is my last blog on Wordpress. I have revamped my personal web site where I always intended to base my blog, and it will be launched today. The link should not change, so you should go straight to it, but if not go to www.bobbarnardtrackengineering.com and go to the blog page. See you there.