Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Why would HRT, a team desperately trying to be Spanish, hire a Chinese reserve driver with no record? Does he bring a big bag of money? HRT are certainly not selling anything in China to warrant trying to gain exposure there. They now have a 30+ Spanish lady driver and a 24 year old Chinese guy, neither with any obvious credentials. Sounds like a great test and back up team. Come to think of it why would we expect anything else. As we would say in Oz, all they need is a tent and elephants and they would have a circus.

Argentina look pretty certain to have a F1 race in 2013, on yet another Tilke masterpiece, while one of his other gems, Korea, is likely to be dropped as they cannot pay the fee. That was a great investment wasn't it? Anyone in Texas watching this?

Meanwhile Magny Cours is asking why no one is looking at their track to stage a revived French GP? It is said that it is too remote, but I have been to both Magny Cours and Paul Ricard, and let me tell you Paul Ricard is not exactly downtown anywhere either. Maybe Bernie's involvement at Paul Ricard has something to do with it, or the politics of the Magny Cours Department?

Spa is supposed to be alternating with a French GP, but the Belgian locals are not much in favor of that and have a petition going. If, like me, you think only seeing a race at Spa every other year while suffering Bahrain each year is too much to bear, please go on to the web site and sign the petition.

http://www.grandprixf1.be/home.html

On a last note, unsurprisingly, Lotus, the car maker, can no longer afford the sponsorship for the F1 team that carries its name, nor will it be able to buy into the team. The real team owners say they are happy to continue with the Lotus name anyway. Thank goodness after all that wrangling.

So the boys from Texas have sent Bernie a check for $35m for next years race fee, $10m more than Tavo's deal. So where is Tavo in all this? Good money after bad. The Track President says ticket interest is strong, it had better be, but what are the ticket prices? Nothing on the web site to say, but if it is what Americans are used to paying it will probably just cover the extra fee, let alone running the event and paying back on the track construction.

Austin is not alone, The World Motorsport Council confirmed the 2012 calendar with Austin, Bahrain and Korea, so let's see which of these actually make it. Lots of little adjustments to the sporting code governing F1.

Joe Saward has a great blog today, so log on and have a read: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

The driver "silly season" is closing. Lotus, i.e. Renault, has Raikkonen but Petrov looks in trouble. Trulli could make way for Ricciardo as he does not have a seat for 2012 yet. Pic is in at Marussia with Timo Glock. No one is safe at Sahara Force India or Toro Rosso. HRT has Pedro de la Rosa and an empty seat. Williams have an empty seat, so who will go there if Rubens doesn't get to stay? Lots of good drivers with no seat, including Grosjean. 

Finally getting some sense of order in my life. The trip to Orlando for the Professional Circuit Owners Convention went much better than Germany, great speakers and great information to a quality audience. Finally unpacking the house but still waiting for a load of our stuff to be delivered that National failed to fit on the truck!

FOTA seems to have imploded while I was away, Bernie is laughing all the way to the bank over this. Bernie got control in the first place by telling the teams association, of which he was a member through owning Brabham, to let him do the deals. Have they such short memories? As I always say, do not fight over the last piece of pie, make a bigger one.

Just a quick blog to comment on the two latest F1 GPs. Korea, one week after their second race, is already questioning the viability of paying Bernie $35m for the pleasure. Apparently the race costs $53m and they are getting $16m in ticket sales, not good arithmetic for a promoter, so they are asking Bernie to be "co-operative" and reduce the fee. It seems the locals believe that the money is better spent on developing the swamp than paying CVC.

In a similar vein the farmers are still  threatening sit downs at the Indian GP site, which looks almost ready, just finishing the grandstands. Sound familiar. The promoters ability to get a return on his $400m investment is the the same one facing Korea. did they not think about this stuff before signing up?

It is said that in F1 one great pass can be enough in a season. Hakkinen on Schumacher at Spa. Webber on Alonso at Spa. But yesterday we saw a non-pass that made a race. That half a lap, a series of silly 2nd gear corners where it is supposed to be impossible to pass, showed two great drivers at the top of their game. Webber as I said has shown it a couple of times this season, and Hamilton forgot all those silly incidents when trying to pass Massa to join him in a masterful display of courage, strength of mind and respect for the other guy. Which other two drivers would race so close, no pushing the other wide on the grass, always giving him just enough room, and no sudden swerves or chops? Button and Alonso probably, but few others. Made it worth stopping up past midnight for.

Then we were treated to twenty or so laps of Hamilton holding off Webber, shades of Villeneuve senior at Jarama. Lewis seems to have been in a different place this weekend, subdued but determined. Martin Whitmarsh explained the strange starts and races of Lewis and Jensen by saying they "lost" 10 pts of downforce on that first lap. One web site suggested rubber build up lodging in the front wing, but that would have been spotted and removed at the pit stop. Lewis had more and more front wing added at each stop, and half way through that last fraught stint asked over the radio if he had all there was. The answer was that the wing was maxed out. The lack of dry running on Friday was blamed by some, but Red Bull did not have the same problem. Just to rub it in Vettel threw in the fastest lap of the race by a second on the last lap!

You know I do not like the DRS. It is a false solution, created by Alonso's problem of getting past a slow car at Abu Dhabi. No question it works in those situations, so far so good. It does not work with two equal cars, and nor should it. We saw Lewis driving away from Webber through the twisty bits, but not quite getting the 1 second he needed to prevent Mark from wiping that out by no more technique and skill than pressing a button on the straight. If Lewis could have kept his 0.7 seconds he made each lap after 20 laps he would have a nice cushion. As it was he stressed himself to the limit of the car's performance each lap just to stay ahead. Made for good viewing, but I'm not convinced it is fair. Let's get rid of it and leave it to the drivers.

Strange to hear Alonso say near the end "I give up, I give up." After putting in 20 laps at qualifying pace he still could not get to Button, who in turn could not get to Webber. I think neither Lewis or Alonso are very happy with their cars at the moment.

Someone who is is Kovalainen. He finished a genuine 14th in the Lotus and mixed it with the back end of the mid-field on pace, beating both Saubers. He was ready to do it again straight away he said. Good to see. 

Congratulations to Casey Stoner on clinching the MotoGP crown at Phillip Island, that must have felt great, but I'm sure he would rather have done it by beating Lorenzo who did not start after losing part of a finger in a warm-up crash. So both Yamaha riders out of the race made for a sparse field, made sparser by race crashes including Rossi. Only ten bikes finished, very sad for the top level of Motorcycle racing. In Moto2 Bradl was pipped at the end by De Angelis which allowed Bradl to retake the title lead from third finishing Marquez by three points. With a return to form by Bradl the last two races could be fun.

In NASCAR land perpetual champ Jimmie Johnson crashed out of last night's Charlotte race and is last in the "Chase." So a new champ this year, if anyone cares. Not many at Charlotte to show they did.

So here we are again in lovely Korea, where nothing has changed, not even the weather. Friday practice took place in pouring rain with no one watching and the track as awful as last year. Nothing has been built of the new city, it is still a track in a swamp in the middle of nowhere. The teams must be wondering what are we doing here? It certainly cannot be promoting Korea, just one look at the place puts me off ever going.

The inevitable accident occurred at the pit exit, and now they all want it fixed. The time to fix it was after the last race! How could Tilke design the pit in and out this way, and how could the FIA approve it? I guess you could ask that about most of this track. So what is the solution for the pit exit you ask? Run it around the back of the run off? NO, put in lights. So when a driver is coming down the main straight at 180 mph plus he sees a nice white light telling him that someone is exiting the pits. So now what? Do not misjudge your braking, stop trying so hard? Really. I guess you could tell the guy exiting with a blue light to make sure he waits until the other car goes by, but that's about all. And this is the top class in racing. And we have not mentioned pit in yet.

Of course it is a rhetorical question to ask what we are doing here, making money for Bernie and CVC. 

The McLarens had it all their own way in the rain by over 1.8 seconds, and Hamilton put in a lot of laps around the same time so it was not a one-off quick lap. Saturday is supposed to be dry, so we will see who really has the set up. Forecast for Sunday anyone?

Stoner is having it all his own way at Phillip Island, despite complaining about the bumps in the track. Maybe the V8s are the problem. Lorenzo is running in third so unless he has a problem in the race it is unlikely Casey will wrap up the title here, which would have been nice for him and Oz. 

Toyota have announced they will be back at Le Mans next year with a hybrid LMP1 car! When I was there in 2008 Toyota had Dome running an LMP1 car which was obviously a test bed, run under the banner of a university if I recall. I was told quietly then that this was the basis of a hybrid car and it has taken four years to come to fruition. If it can give the diesels a run then we are in for great racing, shades of the late nineties when they last raced that fabulous prototype and nearly won.

Superleague has cancelled its Asian races after cancelling its South American rounds. I never understood the point of this series and maybe no one else can either. Indycar is going back to Detroit, courtesy of Roger Penske I presume, who along with his mate Chip Ganassi is highly critical of races outside the US, or Canada and Mexico anyway. As he says, their sponsors get nothing out of it and no one watches. Bit like taking V8Supercars overseas. It is only done for the check to the series promoter, just like Bernie.