Bob Barnard Track Engineering

So the silence is broken on F1 and Sochi by someone in F1. Niki Lauda has pronounced "All those responsible have decided that we are racing there," he told German television RTL, "so in this case we have an obligation, and that extends to Bernie Ecclestone and the FIA." Sound familiar? Exactly what we heard over Bahrain. The powers that be know what they are doing and we have a contract. As I recall the Ukraine has a contract with Russia that gives it control of the Crimea. What happened to ethics, morality and humanity? Just a thought, but how many Mercedes are sold in Russia.

Even that wimp Jimmy Carter organized a boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980, and JFK called Khrushchev's bluff over Cuba. So what does the world do now Russia is supposed to no longer be a threat? Nothing. This is no different to Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

So Bernie has finally come out and said what most of us suspected. India has not paid up, so no GP. It had nothing to do with timing, and perhaps some to do with tax, but in the end if Bernie is not paid in advance then no GP. The Indian promoter has found out what most of us already know, you can't make money on an F1 race if you are not the Government.

NASCAR has tweaked qualifying, as predicted here. Cooling the engines is a big issue, and dealt with by running the cooling water through a separate ice filled bath once they are back in the garage. That system was not allowed during qualifying when the cars are parked out on pit lane, so after a run the cars would go back out with all the tape off the grill to run around slowly on the inside lane of the track. Not a big issue on a large oval, but a half mile? So they are now going to be able to bring a unit out to pit lane and slow laps are not allowed. Still not improving the show, but an important safety measure.

Bit sad when the big news of the day is Alonso telling the paparazzi where to get off disturbing his holiday. I think most of us would have done the same.

Niki Lauda has jumped on the bandwagon about the sound of the 2013 four cylinder turbo engines, he wants them to be "Lauda." Sorry, couldn't resist that. He hopes that they will emit more than a "faint hum." Did he read my blog of a few weeks ago do you think? I excused Mark Hughes as he would have written his piece around the same time.

There is a petition to save the Nurburgring that has 1000 signatures basically the first day, so be sure to log in and sign it. http://renn.tv/url/petition

Force India appear to have finalized their drivers for this year with Sutil remaining, Paul Di Resta joining, and Hulkenburg the Friday driver. Not too shabby.

Arthur Pic is to drive in FR3.5 this year while his older brother Charles drives in GP2, so now you have a choice and can take your Pic. Seriously though, France has been lacking a top driver lately and now they have Vergne and two other Pics, apologies again, don't know what has come over me today. Must be the lack of serious news.

It is still the "silly season" it seems, with a Spanish web site sending false messages about Santander buying in to HRT. So not to be left out I will pass on a bit of fun I read in Nigel Roebuck's piece in this month's Motor Sport about a pilot coming in to land at Gatwick and announcing to the passengers "Welcome to Gatwick, the only building site with its own airport." That struck a chord with me, it seems every airport in the world, at least the ones I go through, are building something. You hear about problems for airlines making money, but the amount of travel must keep going up to warrant all this building.

Seems like no one is happy about what is happening to the Nurburgring, and nor should they be. A friend, Allen Petrich, asked the question about how the current drivers would fair on it against the likes of Nuvolari and Fangio, especially if they had to drive those old cars. He suggests building a new Auto Union and letting the youngsters try to match the times the old guys set, but it occurred to me that some bright programmer must be able to simulate a race between these guys. There is always going to be talk about who was really "the best" which is usually defined by whoever is doing the talking, and it makes for good discussion and often argument, so maybe we do not really want to find out?

In other bits and pieces Adrian Newey says the RB7 will be an evolution not a revolution, but Red Bull might build its' own engine one day. Don't know why you would want to do that with the new regs being sold as the way to bring the likes of VW and the Japanese companies in. Ferrari is really the only chassis/engine manufacturer that has succeeded on a consistent basis, but perhaps Mercedes will change that, and what of McLaren? BMW, Honda, Toyota and Renault tried it, with Renault the only modern success story, but even they really did not build the chassis.

HRT's engineer says KERS is an inefficient system and is only being used in F1 for the manufacturers to sell it on their road cars. If it is inefficient on F1 cars why is it not the same on road cars? The Williams flywheel system seems efficient enough for Porsche, so perhaps he is just talking of the electrical systems. I am all for using the energy out of the current engines as efficiently as possible and think we are still scratching the surface. Gordon Murray's town car just did London to Brighton on less than a gallon, which must be getting close to 100 mpg, and not an electrical cord in sight. But if we are going to all the trouble and cost of developing these systems and putting them in a race car why are we limiting the amount they can store and when they can use it? It just seems another "push to pass" deal, why not just use the energy as efficiently as you can whenever you want? That rewards the best engineering, which is what most of us want to see, until the FIA ban it.

Talking of HRT they are going to use the 2010 car for the first test so they can try out drivers. Yeh right.

Niki Lauda wants Sutil and Hulkenburg at Force India. Well I suggest he buys Force India, then he can have who he wants, until then who cares and why do we keep reporting what Niki wants? It's like Mosley, just fade away.