Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Renault with its forward exhaust is fastest on the last day at Valencia, so obviously they have something working. So much for Helmut Marko's assertion after day two that "If we had run a race today we would have lapped the field." Helmut also vehemently denies they overspent, but even if they did the fines should go to charity, not the smaller teams who came in expecting some equality in spending. Not so fast Helmut, and why don't you just shut up and go away. A friend sent me a link to an F1 technical blog which showed how Newey has used a different way to use the exhaust gas through the diffuser, through a loophole in the rules. You have to love these guys. Apparently this did not show up until the second day. Here is the link.

So Kubica was quickest over the three days, and Lotus are back to having hydraulic problems, this time with the power steering. How does that happen, surely you buy this stuff from a specialist? Glock in the Virgin was well up, but Force India still continued to shine with Sutil second fast. Now, it is all very early days, but it is still interesting. McLaren are to unveil their car tomorrow in Berlin, and Lewis says it looks different to the other teams and is not sure if that is good or bad. The Mercedes is having teething troubles, with the HRT faster at this point. Ross Brawn says he is encouraged though, but is sitting on another payout from Mercedes for his remaining shares, so is probably feeling pretty good about life at the moment. So it is all over the place. Next test Jerez in a week.

The FIA have set the rules for the movable wing for the first three races. A line will be painted on the track at the entrance to the last corner onto the straight where the car following will have to be within one second to allow the wing to be triggered, and another line 600 m from the corner at the end of the straight to show is plebs where the wing can be used by the driver. Ferrari have suggested that 600 m may not be enough, but the FIA say they will tweak it once we see how it works. As I said, are we going to see processions waiting to get to that point?

Mike Gascoyne blames the tracks, as he should, especially the boring desert tracks, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi. As Mike says, they had a clean sheet and as much money as they wanted and still got it wrong. Let's include Korea in that, and wait to see how India works out, if they can sort out their corruption problems. Apparently the first layer of asphalt started being laid yesterday.

In Malaysia Simoncelli on a non-works Honda ended the last day fastest, with Stoner a hair's breadth behind. The Hondas all populated the top of the time sheet with Lorenzo and Spies mixing it with them. The Ducatis improved to 8th and 10th, with Hayden again the quicker, but Valentino thinks his shoulder is costing him 7 tenths or more, so he feels they are closer than it seems. Nice to see that a second string Honda is not too shabby, could make the racing more interesting this year. Some of us can recall when there were several "works" teams out there, especially Yamaha, which definitely made it more fun.

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.

Tony Fernandes is learning what most of us around racing already know, changes to rules cost money. They cost the car builder and the track owner money, everyone except those making the rules. I noticed this when running motorcycle GP's. I would go to meetings of the Road Racing Commission of the FIM, along with sponsors, teams and manufacturers and other track owners, and be forced to listen in silence while 16 men with not a dime invested between them discuss changes to rules. I well remember one poor soul from Yugoslavia, as it was then, who had made all the upgrades to his track as requested, and then was not given a race! He just about cut his wrists on the conference table.

The FIA and FIM keep going on about cutting costs, and then proceed to make the teams redesign the cars or motorcycles each year. And not just a little. We go from movable front wings to movable back wings next year, or has that been dropped? It is hard to keep up, let alone try and design a car for next year. The 125cc class disappears, so what happens to all those machines? Are they now so much junk?

Korea is a running sore now for Bernie, and it seems our friend Mr. Tilke is getting some flak about the lateness in completion. To put the record straight I met Peter Wahl, Managing Director for Tilke, at the Forum in New York back in April, and he said then that the Koreans only wanted them to design the track, the Koreans would build it themselves. Now it seems the Koreans are pleading that they had not built an F1 track before so should be excused for being late! I presume they knew before they started that they had not done this before. When I did Adelaide I had not done it before either, but we still got it done. I know what they mean though, it is more complicated now, but there are also people available now that know how to do it, so there is no excuse if you choose to ignore them. As I try and tell potential clients, it costs just as much to build it wrong as build it correctly, the only difference is the fee for someone like me, and that is peanuts in the scheme of things. The cost of rebuilding it, or not completing it is enormous, as the Koreans are about to find out.

If you want to see the next disaster go on the ESPNF1 web site and look at the photos of the Indian track for next years GP. They are already complaining that the weather is delaying them. When I built Eastern Creek there was a famous photo of the Minister for Sport and I under an umbrella standing in a lake it was raining so much. That was January, and we ran the first race in July. It was not pretty, but by September we ran a test for GP teams following the Oz GP at the Island. You can either get it done or you can't.