Bob Barnard Track Engineering

It's OK expanding racing to the far east, so long as they can build the tracks properly. We have had the earlier saga of Korea not building a track and paying Bernie a chunk of change not to run a GP, and now we are presumably still paving a track to race on in two weeks time. A couple of years back we had a Shanghai street race where the hairpin was so tight the cars had to do a three point turn, and no I am not joking, and then the manhole covers were not secured and the race was stopped to weld them down. Now we have the second practice for Superleague cancelled at a new Beijing street race because the curbs are coming up. It is actually worse than this as it is being run as non-championship race to a Chinese National Sanction as the track was not approved safe for an FIA Grade 2 status. So, the drivers are not going to race as hard if it is a non-championship race? It is OK to have a serious accident so long as the Chinese are approving it? What piece of unsafe are we missing here? As I said yesterday some people get a pass because they do not know better. Who built this anyway?

Suzuka already looks to be a Red Bull benefit. I know it is only Friday, but the signs are ominous. Ferrari nearly a second off the pace, Button struggling with the car, and Lewis dumping it into the wall almost from the get-go and doing very few laps in the second practice. Let's hope the new rear wing arrives in time for him. I guess they only had two of the new wings, and unlike Red Bull, did not want to take the one off of Button's car for him. It must be hot off the press or you would think they would have brought more than the two with them. The Degner curves are catching people out just as they did last year, despite the curbs being altered, but obviously not improved. Barrichello in particular commented that they love Suzuka as drivers, but it does have some safety issues and they have to drive accordingly. Not easy to make changes to Suzuka, being tightly wrapped in the valley as it is. Let us hope the rest of the teams can get it sorted and we can see another good race, and one not spoiled by the weather.

Trulli says he is looking forward to next year with Lotus and applauds their improvement this year. Looking at the practice times they are the class of the new teams, but are still over 4 seconds adrift of the quick guys. HRT are some 6 seconds back, so it seems not surprisingly the new teams have not made much progress this year. They are going to have to make a very significant redesign of their cars in the off season if they are to survive, which so far only Lotus seem to have put in place.

In other F1 news it seems the engine builders are agreeing with me, rule changes cost money, so they are trying to change Jean Todt's mind about the four cylinder turbo for 2013. Cosworth is saying it will cost Euro 20m to design a new engine, and who is paying, HRT,Virgin? The other guys are saying this is a Euro 100m deal, so where's the cost saving in F1 now? They sensibly suggest they can do a lot with the existing 8 cylinder if Jean wants "green," otherwise it is going cost lot of green stuff. Resource Reduction Agreement anybody?

Over in Malaysia Rossi seems to be riding around his shoulder problem, or maybe it is the chip on it that is helping? I'm sure after the comments of Yamaha management he is out to prove something. He is now saying he will go to Australia, which I am sure the Phillip Island Promoter is very relieved to hear, and make a decision after that. Stoner will be looking for a good result to take to the Island, while Lorenzo I'm sure will be looking for a nice quiet race to the World Championship.

Bathurst is on and practice times are as competitive as you would expect from this series, with 1.5 seconds separating the top twenty cars. I'm really sad we do not get the race here, although after ten hours last weekend of Petit I need to get some things done. I think we have had a highlight show on occasions. If any of my US friends know please tell me. David Brabham looks like it could be a long race as his car is well down in practice, but as they say in the classics, and F1 driver's interviews, it is a long race.

Murphy The Bear has a new post today, it is the usual mixture of rumor,opinion, and truth, but as always funny and worth logging in to.

"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?

I hope Korean paving is good, in fact I hope it is the best in the world. If not we are in for a sorry weekend there. The track has released a communication that the track is 98-99% complete. That's good because the inspection is Monday. They go on to say: "The last crucial element is the top layer of surface asphalt, with other less important things likely to go unfinished."

"The inspection team may put first priority on safety and appropriateness of the race track ahead of other factors such as cleanliness and makeshift stands," Kim admitted.

Work on the final surface layer began on Tuesday(!) and will take six days -- exactly the time available until Charlie Whiting arrives at the venue direct from Suzuka.

"Before the inspection the only thing left to do is working on the surface of the track," Kim confirmed." Oh, is that all?

What has taken so long to start this? The most crucial element of any track is the surface, if it does not hold up then you have no race, ask the guys in Dallas, Montreal, Cleveland, or Spa back in 80's. Not sure why it will take six days, I have taken three on most tracks I've done, and I would have thought these guys would have arranged every ton of mix they can lay their hands on. Not that three days is going to make any difference now.

Sad to hear of the passing of Peter Warr, the Team Manager and Principal for the real Team Lotus. Responsible for guiding the team during those glory days. Let's hope the new Team Lotus, if that is what it is finally called, can match them.

Kimi has come out strongly condemning Renault for using his name in connection with a the second seat, he says he was never interested. So why did his management contact Renault? Playing games with rally teams. His name is linked to a move to Ford or the new Mini for next season. Let's hope whatever he drives he can keep on the road. So, who is driving for Renault? The silly season is back, although there are not many seats really free. It seems there will be one at Force India, but whether it is Sutil or Liuzzi we still do not know. HRT are playing games with who is driving in Japan this weekend, let alone next year. Must be great for the driver's mental preparation.

To mention mental preparation, the tension and concentration in Race Control during a race weekend is a high as the drivers. Having worked in a few, including F1, Le Mans, and MotoGP, I enjoyed the piece on how it works in today's ESPNF1 web page, check it out.

Thanks to those of you that are excited about reading my book, should I write it, which seems pretty inevitable but is a daunting task. Writing this blog every day is sometimes taxing, but at least with the book I do not have to worry about content. My main problem is what to leave out so I do not get sued!

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.

So, Max Biaggi wrapped up his Championship at Imola yesterday. Brought back fond memories seeing that track again. His rival, Leon Haslam, blew up in the biggest way, I still cannot believe he kept that bike upright, there must have been oil on his rear tire, or maybe it all burnt off which explained the huge smoke screen. So what now for WSBK? Ducati are pulling out the works team, and the runner up, Haslam, has been released by his Suzuki Team as they do not have confirmation from Suzuki for next year. What is going on? Suzuki are doing well in the US championship, but who cares? Tuned in for a bit of Barber yesterday, but it seemed a pretty thin crowd at the track. Daytona has gone back to a daytime race for the "showpiece" 200, but still not for superbikes, and the public thinks it is changing the deckchairs on the Titanic stuff.

I cannot help thinking that if someone put together a series that produced great racing, went to safe tracks, were run properly, spread the costs and income equably, and gave the spectators and sponsor value for money, we might get somewhere. This is how NASCAR got where it was, and somehow forgot.

How is it that a car can be inspected prior to the race and after the race, the result declared, and then taken to some secret research base and found not to meet the template by a "puffteenth," as my race car tuner used to say. Nice one NASCAR, not the way to keep fans, team owners or sponsors happy. Now we have the prospect of a fifth Championship for Mr. Personality, Jimmie Johnson.

Korea just keeps getting better, inspection now Oct 11, after the freight leaves to go there. I have a personal saying, "a late plane never gets any earlier." Something should have been done about this a long time ago. What is the procrastination over laying the top course?

Not much else of interest today. Petit on the horizon, and should be a good week for Sol Real.