Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Three series enjoying Friday practice with interesting results. In Turkey the weather spoiled the morning, especially for Vettel who stuck it into the wall in a big way and could not take part in the afternoon session. Neither McLarens bothered in the morning, they must expect a dry race, or perhaps they are expecting a wet one and wanted to save their wet tires as Pirelli are concerned that not enough sets of wets have been provided for a complete wet weekend. Button finally topped the times with the McLarens and Mercedes swapping fast times, yes even Michael. Webber apparently did not try for a fast time so the Red Bulls were for once missing in action. Alonso is down in 11th, with both Massa and Petrov faster than their team leaders. Lotus were split either side of the Sauber of Kobayashi, while the corner Virgin turned must have been a wrong turn as they had trouble beating the HRT's.

Meanwhile at Spa it was dry, fancy that, and the Audis continued to set the pace, and the closest petrol car still nearly 5 secs off their fast time. Some big accidents seen here so far, with Peugeot doing an overnight rebuild and the RML car being withdrawn. In the GT class Porsche managed to get one car amongst the Ferraris, but your money must be on the new 458 in this class. Still in 1000km around here anything can happen, even rain!

The Superbikes are at Monza and Checa is in an uncustomary mid field position. Leon Haslam leads the way on the BMW from Mad Max Biaggi. Let's see what Saturday brings for all these series.

Elsewhere the Authorities have frozen Mr. Gribkowsky's money so it looks like he is going to trial. Should make interesting theater. Bernie is going to have fights on two fronts it seems. There are now reports that News Corp is also going to be at the Stuttgart meeting. It appears that this meeting surprised the other teams and is making them "nervous." And we thought politics was dead in F1.

Hello everyone, missed you yesterday but I was at an event in San Diego, driving a Lamborghini Superleggera and Aston Rapide. All very nice and not on a track.

So Vettel is on pole again and by a big margin, but why did he sit in the car so long after qualifying? Webber's qualifying was a complete disaster, and going by the last two races he is going to have trouble staying out of trouble and moving up the field, especially if the KERS is not working and the car is now in parc ferme. Hard to see how the McLarens are going to beat Vettel on this pace unless he has a problem. Rosberg looked good through practice and qualifying, as did Michael, which is encouraging, it would be good to see Nico up there and challenging. The Ferraris are way off the pace again, but can they repeat their Malaysian trick in the race? Lewis played it canny and kept a set of softs for the race to avoid last weeks problems. I discovered the problem with my recording the sessions, SPEED are coding the broadcast so it can't be recorded on DVD, VCR works OK but of course the quality sucks. Does anyone else have this problem?

Still on F1, it seems that HRT have found enough pace to avoid the nasty 107% rule, so long as Vettel does not feel like turning it on in Q1. Pirelli came out prior to the event to say that the cooler conditions should result in fewer "marbles." Well not from what I saw after just 15 minutes of Q1 when presumably they were mostly using the hard tire.

Alexander Rossi won the FR3.5 race at Motorland Aragon, onward and upward. He has joined the Lotus, the Malaysian one's young driver group. That court case is supposed to have a verdict handed down this week.

The ALMS race is at Long Beach with two, yes 2, LMP cars, four of the spec series challenge cars and then the GTs. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Scott Tucker's two LMP2 cars did not set a qualifying time so will they race? There are really only 16 cars that should be out there aside of the grid fillers. Thank goodness for GT. Not that you can watch it anyway.

Montezemolo has continued his war of words with a warning Ferrari will stay in F1 as long as it is not "artificial" which he considers it currently is, mentioning that in 2012 the Concorde Agreement runs out. Pit Pass also has a piece about Mercedes and a breakaway series, which PP believes is never going to happen. Bernie has been to have a nice chat with the German Authorities and all seems to be well apparently, but Pit Pass has more on this. They have some very good sources or excellent researchers. Go to http://pitpass.com

David Coulthard stated the obvious, China is not interested in F1, and Malya said of India getting interested it was like playing cricket in Italy. Nice one.

Checa again took pole at the Assen WSBK round, with the BMWs surprisingly off the pace.

Bret asked me to comment on the 107% rule so here goes. Long, long ago in a land far far away where I grew up there was a 107% rule for qualifying in F1. I don't know who decided that 7% was a safe number for cars to be on track in the race, why not 5% or 10%? And why only in the race? In the race they start from the back so they are out of the way for the most dangerous part, the start, and probably by the time the fast cars come around they will be broken down. No, we let them out all day Friday and Saturday when cars are circulating randomly. Is this smart? Anyway, 107% it was and it was set by the pole time, as we did not have today's three sessions. We still had cars qualifying on low fuel and with special engines for most of the time, so the bar was set pretty high.

Then sometime recently the rule went away. I do not recall specifically.  Perhaps it was because the powers that be thought all the cars were so quick it was not needed. Or perhaps because we only had twenty cars we could not afford to lose any to a silly safety rule. It is there presumably to keep cars that are too slow out of the way. Then we had the three part qualifying, and then last year the new teams, who were really slow. So we reinstate it. But how do we measure it? 107% of what? Not pole time, that is set in Q3, no it is 107% of the Q1 session time because that is when the slow cars are eliminated. But why should that matter? If we are worried about their speed relative to the fast cars, then it should be measured against Q2 or 3 when they are likely to have the soft tires on as they would in the race.

But now let's look at the race. Pole time in Malaysia was around 1 min 36 secs, but for most of the race the quick cars could only manage 1 min 42-44 sec laps. We saw a couple of 1 min 40 sec times, but these were the exception, but even with these everyone except the HRT's would qualify. If you took a typical 1 min 44 sec lap then HRT 's fastest lap was 5 seconds off the pace.

So what does it mean and do we care? Bret says that we watch F1 to see the best, and he is correct, but on that basis what of the Williams performance? F1 is a cruel sport, new teams get no help at all, and no sympathy, and perhaps that is how it should be. Bruce McLaren had to go through it, and so did Peter Sauber more recently. You could argue that HRT is not better than the best GP2 Teams, but the GP2 boys do not have to build their own cars. And so the argument could go on.

Let's get back to the real reason 107% is supposed to be there, safety. It is conceivable that cars that qualified OK develop a problem and cannot keep that pace in the race. What then? Presumably the Race Director will decide if it constitutes a danger to other competitors and black flag it, but on what basis? 107% of the others lap times? I doubt it, it will be a judgment call. So why have a number? I know in NASCAR we often see the "walking wounded" come back out after a wreck and try to earn points, and often they are black flagged as too slow. So why not just write a rule that says "in the opinion of the Race Director the car is not maintaining a safe speed?" If we cannot trust Charlie then we are in trouble.

That's the problem with rules, as soon as you write them there are lawyers looking for ways around them. Look at yesterday's piece about the F1 finances. Bernie said once that the less rules the better, then no one can argue about whether they broke it. We saw the crazy 6mm under the car rule, well those of us old enough did, where the cars were blatantly not 6mm off the track when racing, only in pit lane. Now we have the Red Bull flexible front wing that visibly touches the track and mechanics are seen repairing the bottom edge, but it meets the rule. Ferrari are going to build one, so it must exist. Why not write a rule that says "no part of the car may be seen to make contact with the track at any point during the race?" Then instead of test weights and carbon fiber lay up we just rerun the tape in the Stewards room, game over. But that would be too easy.

Well that would have been a great qualifying to watch if my new DVD recorder had not decided to record in "skip" mode. Anyone else had this problem? Made for a short session, but skipped the good bits of course. Great to see the McLarens right there with Red Bull and it should be a great race, I may have to stay up and watch it, but then there are the ads which are even more annoying at 2 am. Rain has stayed away, but who knows what tomorrow will bring between that and the tires. Ferrari have a lot to do, but the Renaults improved.

It is interesting how happy Tony Fernandes was with 19th and 20th. If you just look at the position not much has changed, the fastest of the new teams. But look at the times and they are making progress, just behind Maldanado in the Williams, and within a second of the midfield that Tony so dearly wants to join. Williams must wonder what hit them. They looked pretty good in practice, but lost the way in Qualy. HRT did get within the 107% rule, but are still 7&8 seconds off the pace. They are going to see a lot of the leaders, if they last that long.

Interesting how Ducati have got around the testing limitations by bringing out next years machine to test at Jerez. Within the written rule, this is clearly not in the spirit and I bet the other teams are now looking to build an "ineligible" machine to test, including some of the current bits of course. Bit like Ferrari's "filming."

Colin Chapman would have been proud. Sir Stirling Moss said that the front uprights were always on the margin, so both Lotus Renaults failing in the same way in first practice in Malaysia is totally consistent with the real Lotus legend.

Webber has bounced back from his slower than expected form in Oz, leading both sessions, but with the McLarens hot on his heels. Who knows who had what fuel load though, and I hope the Ferraris were working on set up because they are a long way off the time so far. There are some big gaps to the bulk of the field who are all two-three seconds off. The other Lotus continues to disappoint, and the sight of the HRT leaving the pits trailing a plume of oil smoke sums up their day. They are seven seconds off the pace so far, right on the bubble of not qualifying again.

Tire feel and wear is apparently totally different to Australia. At one point in the first session Button went out and immediately radioed in to ask if there was something wrong at the back of the car as he had no rear grip! Pirelli believe that anyone starting on the softs will only get eight laps out of them, and between the potential rain and the tires Button is expecting "mayhem." Well they wanted to make the races more interesting, or as Michael said, "a lottery." Not sure that is what I tune in to watch.

Following on from yesterday's piece on fuel consumption going up with the exhaust driven diffuser, it seems the Red Bulls are very marginal on fuel. We saw Mark pull into pit out as soon as he crossed the finish line in Australia, and it is now apparent he did not think he had the fuel to do the warm down lap. The Red Bulls also only did one lap prior to the start, so they are cutting it fine. They are running the KERS system at the moment, but it sounded to me like it was not working for Vettel in first practice. Whatever was wrong he was not running well and finished well down the order. It is reported that they will make a decision to run it or not, but by their own admission they need it here. A chink in the armor? The others can only hope as McLaren think Red Bull are still keeping half a second up their sleeve.

We have Indycar and Grand-Am at Barber Motorsport Park this weekend. Another Chip Ganassi benefit?