Bob Barnard Track Engineering

All the news today is about Kubica's accident in a rally in Italy. I'm sure there will be a lot of people saying he should not be doing it anyway, but he is a racer in the old mould and like Kimi wants to do what he enjoys. Let's all hope he makes a good and complete recovery, but the hand sounds bad and with the complexity of modern F1 steering wheels that could be a long term problem. This does not sound like a short recovery, so Renault have a problem. It seems they have a competitive car that can win races, but who do they have to drive it that can do that for them. They have a raft of "third drivers" including Bruno Senna and Grosjean, but neither of these would float my boat if I were Boullier. I would be round Kimi's place with a big fat contract right now. Kimi is racing his own team, so he can put someone else in the rally car and come back where he belongs. Maybe all the "will he, won't he" go to Renault late last year may have soured the relationship, but the chance to come back in a potentially winning car has to be tempting for someone as driven as Kimi.

Heidfeld and Hulkenburg are also mentioned, as is Luizzi, and they could do well. I would pick Hulkenburg out of those three, but VJ may not want to let him go with the form he has shown at the first test. Whatever the final decision is it makes for an interesting if unfortunate pre-season. Whoever ends up at Renault you can be sure there is a clause about other activities in it, but you can hurt yourself playing tennis, just ask Montoya.

In other news Tony Fernandes of the Team Lotus camp has been awarded a CBE by the Queen for services to industry. Will the judge in the name game case look upon Tony now more favourably he has the Queens' blessing?

So Mother Russia is taking a bigger role in Virgin. Ian Phillips comes in as COO and brings many years of experience with him, but the new Technical Director is Nikolay Fomenko, President of MaRussia, who has no experience, despite the claim that "MaRussia's wealth of knowledge and experience provide us with a solid foundation with which to enter the second season." Wealth of knowledge and experience? They were only formed in 2007 and most of us had never heard of them until they bought into Virgin. I've heard some spin, but this is a good one. Maybe I am missing something here, did Nikolay work in F1 before starting MaRussia?

So Melbourne GP has the Government's full support? As has been said before, that is sometimes the last sound anyone hears before being fired. I have questioned before the benefit to sponsors of being in Australia, and The Mayor of Melbourne might just have given Bernie the opening he wants. Bernie has also come out and said that having two races in Spain is a problem, so which one is going? Meanwhile the Indian GP is having further management changes as the head of the company promoting it has stepped down over corruption allegations. Don't you just love going to these new and exciting places?

The Renault exhaust is directed to come out in front of the sidepods to increase the airflow under the car to the single diffuser as I suggested, and apparently McLaren has a similar arrangement, with Mercedes considering it. This must take some plumbing to get it there. Does not seem to be doing Renault that much good in testing, but it is very early days. Force India are still sitting around the top of the timesheets with Di Resta and Hulkenburg third and fourth.

Over in Malaysia Danny Pedrosa laid down a lap two thirds of a second quicker than team mate, make that rival, Casey Stoner. Ben Spies was third fast amongst a gaggle of Hondas. Nicky Hayden and Rossi were 11th and 13th respectively, but not respectably, not even being the quickest Ducati's. It would seem that test times in the world of MotoGP are more representative of what to expect for the season than F1, or am I wrong?

Down in Sebring Audi have been testing both the R18 and the old R15, but no details seem to have emerged. Anyone out there get a whiff of times or other goings on?

On a serious note our thoughts go out to my Australian mates who are suffering through Cyclone Yasi, and my American ones who are experiencing blizzards and freezing rain. It froze overnight here in Phoenix and will be colder tonight, but nothing to compare with these problems.

The winter wait is over as F1 cars and MotoGP bikes hit the track today for their first test sessions. New cars and drivers, and some old faces for both, so it is going to be hard to make anything of this first test. Alonso and Vettel both near the top of the timesheet, with Hulkenburg in the Force India putting in some surprising times to be right there with them.  Just showing Williams they should not have let him go? The Lotus Renault and Williams have followed Red Bull with the pull rod rear suspension, but the biggest surprise so far is the lack of exhaust outlets on the Renault. They obviously have them, they just do not come out of the top or the sides, so must be underneath. This is the team that promised to be "at the brave end of brave," and it seems they are trying something here. At the end of last season, when we had the diffusers, most teams were feeding the exhaust gas out through them to increase downforce, so we can only presume they are doing something with this gas flow to generate downforce under the car. I read an article a few years ago that said an F1 engine is just a huge air pump, so the volume of gas coming out of the exhaust must be massive. In fact at 18,000 rpm that is 2.4 liters by 18,000, or if my math is correct, 43,200 liters per minute. Imagine if your local gas pump ran at that speed?

At the other end of the timesheet Rosberg is slowest, then Barrichello, with the HRT quicker, go figure.

Over in Sepang Casey Stoner is fastest on day one 0.4 seconds faster than Lorenzo. Did not take Casey long to adjust to the Honda. Now Valentino is down in 12th trying to find a position on the Ducati that is comfortable. Someone suggested he is still sand bagging, but team mate Hayden is behind him, and what use is it to sand bag? Can you really set up the bike if you are running around off the pace? And I would have thought that the "head games" would dictate that you would want to put your stamp of authority on from the beginning? Maybe someone out there can enlighten me? Good to see the Suzuki somewhere on the pace unlike last year, and Ben Spies going OK, but then so is Colin Edwards on the second team Yamaha.

In other news, Bernie is not talking about bribes on the advice of his lawyers, and Mark Webber says he is up for another crack at the title and I'm sure he is given how close he was last year. What Bernie is talking about is new races, "If we have some new races, some others will fall out — we don’t need Australia, for instance." Nice one Bernie.

It is still the "silly season" it seems, with a Spanish web site sending false messages about Santander buying in to HRT. So not to be left out I will pass on a bit of fun I read in Nigel Roebuck's piece in this month's Motor Sport about a pilot coming in to land at Gatwick and announcing to the passengers "Welcome to Gatwick, the only building site with its own airport." That struck a chord with me, it seems every airport in the world, at least the ones I go through, are building something. You hear about problems for airlines making money, but the amount of travel must keep going up to warrant all this building.

Seems like no one is happy about what is happening to the Nurburgring, and nor should they be. A friend, Allen Petrich, asked the question about how the current drivers would fair on it against the likes of Nuvolari and Fangio, especially if they had to drive those old cars. He suggests building a new Auto Union and letting the youngsters try to match the times the old guys set, but it occurred to me that some bright programmer must be able to simulate a race between these guys. There is always going to be talk about who was really "the best" which is usually defined by whoever is doing the talking, and it makes for good discussion and often argument, so maybe we do not really want to find out?

In other bits and pieces Adrian Newey says the RB7 will be an evolution not a revolution, but Red Bull might build its' own engine one day. Don't know why you would want to do that with the new regs being sold as the way to bring the likes of VW and the Japanese companies in. Ferrari is really the only chassis/engine manufacturer that has succeeded on a consistent basis, but perhaps Mercedes will change that, and what of McLaren? BMW, Honda, Toyota and Renault tried it, with Renault the only modern success story, but even they really did not build the chassis.

HRT's engineer says KERS is an inefficient system and is only being used in F1 for the manufacturers to sell it on their road cars. If it is inefficient on F1 cars why is it not the same on road cars? The Williams flywheel system seems efficient enough for Porsche, so perhaps he is just talking of the electrical systems. I am all for using the energy out of the current engines as efficiently as possible and think we are still scratching the surface. Gordon Murray's town car just did London to Brighton on less than a gallon, which must be getting close to 100 mpg, and not an electrical cord in sight. But if we are going to all the trouble and cost of developing these systems and putting them in a race car why are we limiting the amount they can store and when they can use it? It just seems another "push to pass" deal, why not just use the energy as efficiently as you can whenever you want? That rewards the best engineering, which is what most of us want to see, until the FIA ban it.

Talking of HRT they are going to use the 2010 car for the first test so they can try out drivers. Yeh right.

Niki Lauda wants Sutil and Hulkenburg at Force India. Well I suggest he buys Force India, then he can have who he wants, until then who cares and why do we keep reporting what Niki wants? It's like Mosley, just fade away.

How great to see a Williams on pole again! I must confess to a soft spot for Sir Frank's Team, as I think most people have. Mine started when Alan Jones won the championship and then to see how Sir Frank has battled his own personal problems and the struggle to stay competitive is an example to us all. Let us not forget it was Hulkenburg and not Barrichello that did it, well done Nico, and what a great way to repay Sir Frank's comments about your ability of just last week. Maybe it was the confidence boost he needed. Interesting qualifying session with nothing between the Red Bulls again, and if Nico had a wet set up then he will probably go backwards fast in the race. Interesting to read his comments of Friday that they would be lucky to make it into Q3.

Hard to see Lewis doing anything other than trying to stay in touch and Alonso, who knows, but both of these guys need the Red Bulls to break again. Mark looked in a determined mood, and it looks more and more like my predictions over the last few months may come true and Mark will leave at the end of the season. Horner's "Mark needs to focus on the job" sounds like a "shut the **** up" to me. Let us hope tomorrow is dry and we can see a straight fight.

On the engine front there are more opinions from Cosworth and Renault that the proposed 2013 engine regs need to be very tightly framed to prevent a runaway spending war, or leave the V8's alone. All is not settled.

HRT has a new partner to help with the money as was suspected, so let's hope for a better season next year. The talk of using the Toyota chassis does not gel with me as the rules change again next year. I think the discussion with Toyota is probably more about using their engineering consultancy they have set up at the old F1 base. I can be wrong though, after all I did not pick Hulkenburg for pole.

Stoner took pole in Valencia so we should be in for a good race tomorrow with Lorenzo, who despite being a Spaniard, says he does not like Valencia. Spain is a bit like Australia, not so much a country as a collection of States. Nice to see Checa managed not to be slowest, just. But he is getting closer to the top lap times.

In Zuhai the Peugeots start at the front. The really interesting thing at Zuhai was the announcement of the Intercontinental Cup calendar for 2011. No Petit, just a "race outside Europe TBA" in October? Sebring is listed. In the GT class the big story is the Porsche Hybrid qualifying second, although it does not actually qualify for points.