Bob Barnard Track Engineering

So the end of season FIA Gala is to be held in New Delhi next year. What fun for everyone to drag themselves there after flying around the world all year. What next, the FIA Headquarters?

Sad to see Johnny O'Connell has lost his Corvette drive and been switched to the CTS program in World Challenge Series. Johnny has served Corvette long and well, good luck with the CTS Johnny.

Nice piece from Joe Saward http://joesaward.wordpress.com/ about the dangers inherent in Ferrari's suggestion to run three car teams, worth a read.

Truthfully there is little else in the news worth talking about, must be Christmas. Had a great evening with an old friend, Jean-Marc Bonnay, "Snoopy." Snoopy has done pretty much everything on two and four wheels except F1 and we bemoaned the current state of most of it. Must be getting old. Waiting on plans to start the Grand Bayou project in Louisiana and to see what will come of the Arizona project. Need to get back to finishing the book.

Well we now have the design for the Austin F1 track, and I think it is everything we feared. They say it will be a classic track, and it is, classic Tilke. How many corners can we fit in? Over 20 is the answer.

In other bad news, Cycle News has ceased publication, the only weekly motorcycle magazine here in the US. When I came over to run the USGP for Kenny in '93 I was amazed at the lead time for the other monthly's, we could barely run a couple of ads for a race nine months away. Victim of the internet or is there something else going on here?

Rome is the latest place that says it is going to run an F1 GP in 2012. Is anyone keeping track of how many races there will have to be in 2012 to accommodate all these? Or who is going to lose their race is probably the better question. Spa? One thing is for sure, Bernie has plenty of options for squeezing more money out of, Russia, India, Qatar, Bulgaria, Rome and Austin. We won't have a race at a track we recognize soon, or worse, one that we want to watch.

On the home front I moved house over the weekend, not a lot of fun even though we have done it often. Still sorting out the mess. Looks as if the Grand Bayou track in Louisiana is ready to move on a redesign, and still having contacts with overseas potential circuits. Sol Real has been going through some introspection and rethink on the site, but we are about through that. Basic layout will not change as the lots here are all based around a section, one square mile. So I can now get into the detail of the layout and look at how to build in some elevation without moving a million cubic yards of dirt! Good presentation again last evening and another likely founder. Once we have the legal documents finalized we can move on closing some deals.