Bob Barnard Track Engineering

How great to see a Williams on pole again! I must confess to a soft spot for Sir Frank's Team, as I think most people have. Mine started when Alan Jones won the championship and then to see how Sir Frank has battled his own personal problems and the struggle to stay competitive is an example to us all. Let us not forget it was Hulkenburg and not Barrichello that did it, well done Nico, and what a great way to repay Sir Frank's comments about your ability of just last week. Maybe it was the confidence boost he needed. Interesting qualifying session with nothing between the Red Bulls again, and if Nico had a wet set up then he will probably go backwards fast in the race. Interesting to read his comments of Friday that they would be lucky to make it into Q3.

Hard to see Lewis doing anything other than trying to stay in touch and Alonso, who knows, but both of these guys need the Red Bulls to break again. Mark looked in a determined mood, and it looks more and more like my predictions over the last few months may come true and Mark will leave at the end of the season. Horner's "Mark needs to focus on the job" sounds like a "shut the **** up" to me. Let us hope tomorrow is dry and we can see a straight fight.

On the engine front there are more opinions from Cosworth and Renault that the proposed 2013 engine regs need to be very tightly framed to prevent a runaway spending war, or leave the V8's alone. All is not settled.

HRT has a new partner to help with the money as was suspected, so let's hope for a better season next year. The talk of using the Toyota chassis does not gel with me as the rules change again next year. I think the discussion with Toyota is probably more about using their engineering consultancy they have set up at the old F1 base. I can be wrong though, after all I did not pick Hulkenburg for pole.

Stoner took pole in Valencia so we should be in for a good race tomorrow with Lorenzo, who despite being a Spaniard, says he does not like Valencia. Spain is a bit like Australia, not so much a country as a collection of States. Nice to see Checa managed not to be slowest, just. But he is getting closer to the top lap times.

In Zuhai the Peugeots start at the front. The really interesting thing at Zuhai was the announcement of the Intercontinental Cup calendar for 2011. No Petit, just a "race outside Europe TBA" in October? Sebring is listed. In the GT class the big story is the Porsche Hybrid qualifying second, although it does not actually qualify for points.

In a masterful English understatement David Hobbs call the pit exit in Korea "unfortunate." Hamilton almost showed us what will happen at pit in if they try and keep their speed high to avoid being rear ended. Apparently the new curb at Turn 16 is coming up already, and the track is getting bumpier. And tomorrow it is going to rain. I am tired of people, journalists mainly, saying it is going to be exciting. I repeat we are trying to run a professional sport here, not a circus or a lottery. I am surprised that no one has hit a wall yet, but that tells me however hard it looks like they are trying, the drivers are not at ten tenths.

I am sure you are getting tired of me harping on about Korea, but it just annoys me so much as a professional designer and builder to see something like this being built. They spent $250m on this, and as I have said before, it costs no more to build it correctly as to do it wrong. Let's hope tomorrow does not see a big accident, but I fear Turn 1 at the start is not going to be pretty.

It is a testament to the top teams that they can come to a new track and all be so close on set up. The simulation though predicted a 1 min 44 sec lap, so that did not work too well.

I think it is time for me to retire if Korea is an example of what a modern race track needs to be. Mark Webber says "We are really clutching at straws to be able to try and criticise anyone here." Personally I cannot find anything I actually like about the track from either a racing or safety point of view. It is as I have said before, if they think the track owners know nothing but somehow manage to get it finished, and that is relative, and get it half right, then they have done a "remarkable job." If they think you should know better then nothing is good enough. Just when was it OK not to have a verge between the white line and the wall? Some people compared it to Valencia, but it is far worse.

I enjoyed the streaming web based coverage of first practice, no commentary and we could hear the cars. Picture quality was great too. Not that the SPEED boys did a bad job on the second practice, for once it was not all gushing over a new track. I thought their comments were spot on about that last corner complex and pit entry, not sure about pit out either, and all those corners just running together. We saw in practice how impossible it is to overtake through those. And it is bumpy, despite the McLaren engineer's comments yesterday about how smooth it is. I guess if you are walking at 4 mph it looks OK.

The pavement has stayed down so full marks for that. I suspect the dust helped that, and the track surface is so hard, like we had in Adelaide, that the tires are not getting a grip and that is why we are seeing so much graining from tires sliding. When Keke Rosberg won the first race in Adelaide he had to keep stopping for tires as he was spinning the rear tires so much he was ripping them to shreds.

There is so much wrong here I do not even know where to start. It is like when I inspected Mosport after Don Panoz bought it. I believe that this is the worst Tilke design so far. Shouldn't he be getting better? I can only surmise that he was told to build a street circuit to suit the future city. So he designed around obstacles that are not there yet, instead of designing the track on a blank piece of ground, and then telling them to design the city around it. Perhaps he does not like to tell clients when they are wrong, but as a professional that is what we should do. Perhaps that is why he has all these projects and I do not. It is certainly why I do not work for Don any more, he got tired of me telling him what he could not do.

On a different note I read a comment from Ferrari that based on recent races they had done the right thing by backing Alonso over Massa. Sort of a self fulfilling prophesy don't you think?

And what about Lewis? Sits out most of practice and goes out and bangs in fastest lap.

We are down at the sharp end of most Championships now, with some having been decided, some decided this weekend, and some still to play for. Congratulations to Lorenzo for the MotoGP and Tony Elias for the Moto2 World Championships, but what might have been if Valentino had not crashed? But that is what makes this sport so great to watch, there are so many what ifs, but in the end it is only what was. It is not as if someone else took Valentino out, he crashed himself, so it is part of his year. Great guts and determination to come back, and to win today's race from sixth. Lorenzo is a worthy Champion, and next season should be a very good one if they can all stay healthy.

Daniel Ricciardo missed out on the FRenault 3.5 Championship, finishing fourth after a late spin following a good duel with the eventual Champion Aleshin. Daniel has still done enough to deserve a step up next year, so let's see where he goes.

At Suzuka the predictable Red Bull 1-2 occurred with Vettel leading home Webber and is now third in the championship by virtue of Alonso's extra race win. All pretty predictable, except I thought Kobayashi's drive was inspired, and how he kept the car on the track and largely one piece must have been divine intervention. Hamilton too drove a great race given his start to the weekend and apparently with an ear infection. That cannot be great with a driver relying on the inner ear so much to tell him what is going on with the car. I don't know that I expected the McLaren to be as close on times a they were, and were not using the latest wing due to their practice problems. How unlucky can you be for a new gearbox to lose third gear when you have gone through the season without problems? It robbed us of a great finish between Alonso and Lewis. Massa had a terrible weekend. Are the mind games of being a number two getting to him? That dive down the inside at Turn One at the start was never going to work, and how did he not get a penalty for that when Petrov did? Petrov's would seem an honest mistake while Massa's was totally self inflicted.

We were treated to some excellent "commentator speak" this weekend. Kobayashi had three "unofficial spins." Those official ones must be something to see. Then there was the 130R that should be called the 130L, really? Varshaisms abound. I especially liked the "slow hairpin." I personally prefer the really fast hairpins, but you do not see many of them these days. David Hobbs chimed in with the fact that Red Bull had lead all the races this year "one way or another." I personally only know of one way to lead a race, but David has had a lot more experience of this stuff.

David Brabham finished thirteenth at Bathurst, only twelve seconds behind the winning Holden driven by Lowndes and Skaife after over six hours of racing. Craig Lowndes was one of those Australian drivers I was referring to yesterday who did get to Europe, but only had money for one year, so came back to drive tin tops, and very well he does it too.

And so on to Korea for the inaugural Grand Prix. Let's hope it is not a reprise of Dallas from 1984, or Spa where the race was canceled after one practice. Charlie Whiting is going there Monday, and will probably give it the OK, seeing as how Bernie has already said so.

As amply demonstrated at Suzuka, drainage is a key factor in building a track, and a most difficult thing to achieve. It is one of the featured topics in my Track Engineering session at next months Professional Circuit Owners Forum in Cologne, and we have the right guy presenting the latest designs, as we have for every topic. If I were building a new track I would take this team of presenters to do it for me.

Now Suzuka did some upgrading before the Japanese GP came back from Fuji, but they obviously spent all the money on the important stuff like the pit building, corporate suites and press room. I do not know how much rain they got, but 50mm was the forecast, which is not a lot where I've been living, but the topography of Suzuka, which makes it such a great track, also presents a huge challenge for drainage. Tomorrow morning is forecast wet as well, so we are in for an interesting day. Lewis Hamilton's weekend went from bad to worse with a gearbox change, so he is going backwards at the moment. Still, Kimi won it from 17th once, so anything is possible.

It seems the flexi-wing saga is not over, with comments about how low the Red Bulls are running resurfacing. Martin Whitmarsh said he was too busy to notice, I bet he was.

Bernie is as always in the news guaranteeing the Korean race will go ahead amidst photos of a track with a top course and curbs. I will be the first to congratulate them if that surface stays down, and will be in the queue to ask what they used. Bernie also said the Russian F1 GP is a done deal, the only potential stumbling block being the annual promotion fee, apparently comparable to the approximately $40 million paid by Singapore and Abu Dhabi. Oh, is that all? Bernie says he will sign the deal with the resort city Sochi the day after they sign it. For $40m I bet he will. So who is being dropped from the calendar? Is Austin in trouble? According to the local American Statesman newspaper the planning authorities have issued a four page list of concerns about the project. Tavo is apparently some way from satisfying the bureaucrats who have to approve it before groundbreaking can occur, which is scheduled for December. Couple this with the recent report that the design has not been submitted to the FIA as expected, not that they have missed a deadline, just an opportunity, and you wonder where this going. Tavo welcomed the inclusion of Perez in the Sauber Team, saying it will add 20,000 to the crowd.

In Malaysia Jorge Lorenzo is obviously out to prove himself a worthy champion by taking pole for the MotoGP ahead of Nicky Hayden, Nicky's best qualifying for a long time. Maybe Jorge figures that being in front is the safest place to be with Valentino back in sixth spot. Ben Spies qualified well, maybe he is going to run rear guard for his future team mate?

In the FRenault 3.5 final round Australian Daniel Ricciardo won the first of the weekend's two races to tie for the lead in the Championship with Russian Mikhail Aleshin, so Sunday's race will decide the title. Nice going Daniel, let's hope you have the backing to keep going unlike most Australian drivers. Perhaps Mark Webber's performance and potential F1 title will spark more sponsorship interest. Tonight's race , for us in the US, from Suzuka should clarify the F1 Championship picture, and not hopefully not "muddy the waters," couldn't help that. Whatever happens it will be a great few hours of TV thanks to the qualifying postponement.