Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Slow news day, I guess we will have to get used to this as we go into the winter break, but who knows, there may be more gossip then.

Portugal qualifying washed out. Phillip Island is not looking so bad now. It must rain a lot in Portugal, although I always thought of it as a dry country like Spain. I remember Senna's great win there in '85 when it was a washout.  So Lorenzo on pole by half a second and Hayden, Rossi and Stoner all close. I bet Pramac are glad they drafted Checa in to improve their performance, he is last and over 5 seconds off the pace. Who thinks that was a good move? There are only two races left with this one, what was the risk of giving some young guy a chance?

V8Supercars will not be returning to Bahrain next year with scheduling around other events as the reason, but I suspect since no one turned up to watch it may not be worth what the V8's were asking. Now Abu Dhabi is a stand alone race which cannot be a cheap exercise, so you wonder how long that will last, but I guess they have to put something on at this billion dollar mausoleum.

Peugeot ran a test hack at Monza to prepare for next year's Le Mans. Not sure I like the sharks fin, I know it is there for safety reasons, but it does not look right on what was surely one of the most beautiful sportscars ever built.

The driver silly season goes on, with Hulkenburg getting a big rap from Sir Frank Williams, just when he was about to get the axe for Maldanado. D'Ambrosio is rumored to be close to signing for Virgin, so who's out?

It will be great to see some action on the Korean track after all the talk and surmising. There are still mixed messages coming out and you can read them on ESPN F1 and Autosport.com as easily as I can repeat them. There is a nice piece by a journalist on ESPN F1 about the trip and the "love" hotel, usually rented by the hour, but quite nice. The photos of the activity on the main straight remind me of a street race rather than a permanent circuit, but as long as it is ready tomorrow that's OK. I liked the quote for the organizers that "We can hardly expect to be perfect from the outset." Well yes you can actually if you know what you are doing or get the right people in to do it, which is what Tilke did in the end to get it finished. He is confident the track will stay down, and has obviously used the strongest, and most expensive, binder to lay it, but hey, it's only money.

Some of the walls look close to me and in odd spots. Liuzzi has commented on this and others say it looks like Valencia street circuit in places. As they are building a city in and around it then I guess that is what it is. It follows on Abu Dhabi where they said the moved the walls in closer, banking on the TecPro barriers to work. They may well do, but I think the drivers are a bit more cautious when the run off is less than they usually have, which results in a procession rather than a race. Did we see anyone overtake at Abu Dhabi last year?

Enough of the talk, SPEED Channel is streaming practice at 9pm EST in the US. You can work out what that is where you are, about nine hours from now. The BS stops when the rubber hits the road.

In other news, well not news, Kimi crashed again, and Hulkenburg will probably lose his ride despite a good season to Maldanado who has a wallet the size of Yamamoto's. The V8Supercars are due to race at Surfers Paradise as a replacement for IRL, shades of Long Beach when they dumped F1. V8's will be a better show, but we in the US will be unlikely to see it.

"The Korea International Circuit is ahead of schedule in its bid to host the country's inaugural grand prix, according to circuit official Kim Jae-ho."  I have heard some promoters spin before, but this post on ESPNF1 has to take the prize as the best! How can you be months behind on the inspection date required by the FIA and "be ahead?" Actually it gets worse. The paving which was supposed to have started Tuesday did not start until today, is now going to take three days and will be finished by Friday. These Koreans must have a different calendar than the rest of us. Now some of you may think I am picking on Korea, but I do this for a living, and it is criminal that they are both incompetent and appear to be getting cut a whole load of slack. I found out the hard way that if the powers that be know that you know how to do it they want it perfect, but if they know someone has no idea they will settle for what they can get. Life is not very fair sometimes. This Grand Prix is going to be a circus. As I have said many times, do not take your show to somewhere that does not allow it to put on anything other than it's best performance.

There is an article on Speed's web site by Marshall Pruett about how Grand Am is listening to its fans for a change, and making changes to the cars to make the series more interesting. Things like making the "greenhouse" on the Daytona Prototypes smaller, and the GT's changing to central nut wheels. Changing deckchairs on the Titanic is what comes to my mind, and he lost me completely about the possible DTM cars. Read it yourself and see if you can work it out?

VJ Mallya had a bad day in court. He originally won a decision in the English High Court over sponsors of the Spyker car that he bought to get into F1. They conflicted with his airline and brewery business which he stuck on the cars, so they pulled out. The High Court gave VJ a $4.7m payout for their leaving, but the Court of Appeal, disagreed. "both companies were contractually guaranteed the status as the team's most prominent sponsors, appeal judge Sir Bernard Rix ruled.

"In my judgment ... Force India rode roughshod over all these rights and protections." So VJ now has to pay it back. There have been rumors all year about Force India and money, this can only make matters worse.

Williams are losing sponsors at the end of this season, and have said that they are confident about replacing them. Their recent good form should help them , but it is suggested that a key figure in that good form, Nico Hulkenburg, could be out of a drive in favor of Maldanado who has a bag of money from a sponsor to bring. I know this is how F1 has run for years, but that does not make it right. What other sport can you buy your way onto the team? Not that Maldonado is not a good enough driver to get an F1 drive, but what happened to loyalty?