Bob Barnard Track Engineering

A bit of silliness to start the day, not much else going on. Teams in China for the F1 GP, and Glock is worried that the Virgin may not qualify here. He is even suggesting that the quick teams might use the softs in Q1 just to make sure. He obviously is not feeling the love.

Red Bull reportedly not sure about using KERS here, again, and there is even a suggestion that the radio message to Vettel in Malaysia to turn his off was just mischief as he did not slow down. Not that he was really trying being a second a lap slower than the fastest lap set by team mate Webber. Mark shared some Australian vernacular with reporters in China who dared to suggest he was playing Eddie Irvine to Schumacher. Nice one Mark.

Pirelli are defending the amount of "marbles" on the track from their tires, saying it is normal for tires to wear and put rubber on the track. Yes but it usually goes on the surface to help grip, not roll up in big balls to be thrown around. There is no evidence of tracks "rubbering in" as they used to. There is a piece in Motor Sport this week where Franchiti went to the F1 test to see his cousin Paul di Resta and witnessed a trial start. Loads of wheelspin and tire smoke, but when the car had gone no black marks on the road!

In the same edition Nigel Roebuck has a great article on politics in sport and the Bahrain situation. As I said Bernie cannot say F1 has nothing to do with politics when politicians are voting to pay most of his fees. Despite mutterings from the Crown Prince that things have settled down there and we can think about a new date, read Pit Pass web site,

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=43353

This makes for salutary reading.

Rumors circulating that all is not well at Williams, how can it be, share price dropping with their finishing places. Sam Michael is nominated as the scapegoat. There are also mutterings about Mercedes, and Montezemolo cannot be happy over at Ferrari. Jean Todt apparently paid a visit to Ferrari Wednesday, trying to shut them up about the engine I would guess.

This weekend we have the F1 race from China and the World Superbike from the "cathedral," Assen, ALMS and Indycar at Long Beach, although the lack of news on that is deafening. Remember when Long Beach was as big as Indy?

Well that was fun, not. Web site and blog hacked this morning so late in writing this up.

We keep hearing that the DRS wing is going to make overtaking easy in Malaysia, but it is raining. Even if intermediates are on the car the wing cannot be moved, so it has to be totally dry for us to see if it works better than Oz. With less than twelve hours to first practice there is little to stir the emotions.

It seems the financial writers are no better at working out what is going on with F1 finances than I am. Pit Pass web site points out that the increase in the gross income does not jibe with the extra that should have been generated by the addition of Canada and Korea, so it would seem the race fees went down last year for all, or some. Pit Pass promises to give us the real story soon. There are stories that the teams are going to push for a 75% share of the gross in the next Concorde Agreement due shortly. That will put a dent into an already bad situation for CVC.

Jean Todt is cranking up the rhetoric. My friend Allen Petrich actually may have hit on what he is up to, make the F1 name so devalued that the 100 year rights are not worth having, and the FIA can start another Championship. Jean was talking down the audience numbers today, saying no one is watching because the tracks are boring and racing is bad. Pushing the 1.6 l Turbo down Bernie's throat could also be part of the plot. Does anyone know what GP2 is going to run when that happens? Is GP2 going to stick with the current engines, and will they be more powerful? I see that Renault has come out and said that they are increasing fuel usage due to the need to keep feeding the exhaust driven diffuser, about 10% more per race. That's really green isn't it?

Abu Dhabi is also looking to make changes to the track layout to help overtaking, and make it suitable for MotoGP. That is not going to be easy, but who do they have doing it? Why Mr. Tilke of course. Now, isn't it the definition of stupid to do something the same way twice and expect a different outcome?

The final corner onto the straight at Interlagos, home of the Brazilian F1 GP, has always bothered me. The drivers cut across pit entry to get a faster line on basically a blind corner, and then the wall on the exit of the corner is right on the edge of the pavement. We have seen crashes here in F1, but not as many as you would expect, so it was one of those deals that seemed OK even if it looked bad. Well, I should remember my own words, if it looks bad it probably is. A motorcyclist died earlier this year and last weekend there was a fatality in a stock car race, the third fatality on four years, at a time when racing is generally being spared. There are now calls to modify the corner, but the problem is not easy to fix. The track is very close to the boundary of the property on the outside, and there is a steep drop off on the inside. The corner is great and re-profiling it would not be appreciated by the drivers, but nor would dying. Not a simple fix.

Jean Todt is flagging a revisit to the fees CVC, aka Bernie, paid for the hundred year commercial rights to F1. The fight over engines is apparently just an opening salvo, and Jean is giving notice he is standing for re-election. I bet Bernie will be working away behind the scenes to put his own man in there.

I love the fact that the Russina GP track is "well on track." Well the race is three years away so why shouldn't it be? The best bit is the "Final Feasibility Study" is going to the IOC. Last time I looked they did not run F1 races. And wouldn't you do the feasibility study before you signed a contract for millions of dollars to stage an F1 race? Silly me, this is just the study to make sure you can run a Winter Olympics and an F1 race within a few months of each other, not whether it is going to make money. We all know that answer don't we?

Has everyone caught up with what McLaren were trying to do with their trick exhaust before they gave up and copied Red Bull? "The Octopus" was what it was called. Instead of collecting the exhaust into two pipes from eight, it split them up and fed them into areas of the underfloor to provide the perfect exhaust diffuser. It was all a bit too complicated, and like a lot of complicated things in F1, they could not get it to work. Some of the best cars have been the simplest, the FW07 for instance. Don't think they have forgotten it though, so look for a revisit sometime this year.

So the World Council of the FIA decided Ferrari had been punished enough for the "team orders" at Hockenheim. It seems they are to revisit the rule so we can assume that team orders are going to be allowed in some form. Jean Todt obviously has a different view to Max Mosely on the subject, which I guess is no surprise as the man in charge at Ferrari when the issue arose in Austria that resulted in the rule. So, what will it be? Teams can order drivers to let their team mate go by as long as it is not done in a way to be seen or heard by the fans? If you listen to some teams that is what is happening anyway, and most fans know it is happening, they just do not want their nose rubbed in it. That is going to take the cooperation of the driver being told to move over, which is where the problem will lie. Rubens and Felipe both clearly wanted everyone to know what was going on. The bottom line is the average fan wants to see racing, and if one driver is quicker than the other then he should be able to pass him on the track without the help of team orders. If this were not the case then why is there an outcry when it happens? So good luck FIA in framing that rule.

The World Council also decided not to accept any of the entries for the additional team for the 2011 season. Not a  big surprise, but disappointing. I think the two applicants were probably better prepared than the three who joined this year, but it seems that the USF1 debacle, and the form of the new teams has made the FIA gun shy.

On a busy day they also released the 2011 schedule, with twenty races including India. Abu Dhabi lost the cherished last race spot to Brazil. That did not take long for that gloss to wear off. So who is going off for 2012, or are we seeing even more races? Bernie's mate Tavo has a date for 2012, if the track is ready, and we know Bernie wants Russia in, and then there is Qatar, Bulgaria etc. The teams are going to need that three week break in August.

Well is seems the summer season has woken up and we have some news to comment on. Casey Stoner is off to Honda next year in MotoGP, not a surprise really, and the other shoe to drop will be Rossi to Ducati to get away from Lorenzo.

Over at F1 at Silverstone the HRT Team have put Yamamoto in to replace Bruno Senna, only for this race they say, and only for money is what they are not saying. Yamamoto has raced in F1 before but made such an impression I cannot remember. In practice he is was not the slowest, but only because Trulli's Lotus broke after three laps! Red Bull have led both sessions today with Vettel quickest in the morning and Webber this afternoon. Times are all over the place with Ferrari struggling in the morning and second fastest in the afternoon. Teams working out the new layout. Eddie Oliver, you mentioned the bike times were slower than the simulation, can you tell us how much? It would be interesting to know the prediction for the F1 cars. Drivers not saying too much about the new section, mainly worried about the high curbs at the Maggotts/Becketts complex and are asking for them to be removed. I can understand why being a really high speed corner, and that style of curb is used for slow chicanes. Why would you put those in and why did the FIA OK them? Nice quote in one report that Rosberg was half a second quicker than his "elderly" team mate!

Bernie is calling for tire with a maximum life of 100km so the cars have to stop twice and spice up the show. You know my thoughts on that sort of idea, a circus is entertaining but that is not what we are running here. Seems that Bernie did not keep his mates at the FIA informed of the deal in Austin, with both Jean Todt and Nick Craw, head of ACCUS, and I know no one knows what that is but look it up, reported as saying they knew nothing and still do not. Todt is saying it is a "project," i.e. not yet real. This all comes from an article in the Austin Business Journal, seems they are still sceptical of the whole deal. Tavo Hellmund is reported off in South Africa, at the World Cup or raising money? Tilke say they will have a track layout in September, but no one knows where the site is yet.

Jonathon Summerton seems to have become the spokesperson for Cypher, the latest would be US F1 team. Jonathon tells us there is a lot going on and he is learning a lot from these ex F1 guys. Hard to see how they are keeping this so secret, surely someone out there knows who these guys are? Tony Dowe, you always know everthing.

Sir Frank Williams is handing over the CEO role at Williams to Adam Parr, but will remain the Team Principal and front up at the shop every day. Amazing man, it would be great to see Williams bounce back. Not that they are doing bad at the moment, but we remember the glory days and their innovations.

Over at the Rally of Bulgaria there are two headlines almost side by side, have to laugh, "Raikkonen for a podium," "Raikkonen crashes and stops special stage." Just about sums up Kimi's year. I hope you are enjoying it Kimi.