Bob Barnard Track Engineering

There are a few realignments going on with the F1 teams. Williams announced that they are going to use Renault engines from next year, so Renault increases its hold on the F1 engine market, despite supposedly being down on power. Let's hope this improves the performance of the team. HRT's ownership and management just got cloudier, with a buyout of Carabantes by Thesan Capital, which is a venture capital group backed by Nomura Bank of Japan. They say they will move to base the team in Spain with the current Directors and Team in place. So presumably Colin Kolles is still on the outer. This all begs the question who really is minding the store and who owns it? And will it make any difference?

HRT's arch rival for being last, Marussia Virgin, has confirmed a technical tie up with McLaren Applied Technologies, so look for an improvement there and perhaps Mercedes engines? Cosworth are going to be left with HRT, so it is highly doubtful they are going to invest in a new for 2014 engine with just one customer.

Speaking of engines, Clive Pollock is reportedly going to push on with his proposed engine for 2014 despite the u-turn by the FIA, and Bernie is now threatening to sue the FIA if the 15,000 rpm limit impacts on the poor promoters and their ticket sales drop. Of course his concern is that the promoter will not then have the money to pay the fee to stage the race, but since when has that ever been a concern for him? Bernie is famous for not being fond of drivers in general, they are like buses, another one will be along shortly. That is why he has cleverly promoted F1 as a team sport and built Ferrari and McLaren etc as the stars. It also seemed that promoters enjoyed the same stature as drivers, as there is always someone else waiting to pay him to lose money whenever a promoter wakes up or runs out of it. Bernie has also been having a bit of a verbal spar with Williams CEO Adam Parr. Adam was crass enough to point out that sports such as NFL enjoy considerably larger TV fees and suggested Bernie could be doing better for them all on this front. Bernie of course then pointed out how well Adam was doing on the sponsorship front for Williams. Touche.

The leakage of top staff continues at the other Renault, which isn't, Lotus Renault, with designer Tim Densham reportedly heading for Ferrari. Is everything really well at Renault as Boullier continues to tell us?

I took a day off yesterday so have not commented on the racing. Lorenzo scored a great win at Mugello so perhaps the Championship will not be a Stoner/Honda procession after all. Simoncelli managed to finish a race while Rossi dragged his Ducati up to sixth. In Imola the Peugeots gained revenge for Le Mans with an easy win over the Audis

This is my last blog. Just kidding, but it is my last blog on Wordpress. I have revamped my personal web site where I always intended to base my blog, and it will be launched today. The link should not change, so you should go straight to it, but if not go to www.bobbarnardtrackengineering.com and go to the blog page. See you there.

Now before you all write and tell me that is old news, this is the next generation. Wayne's two sons, Luca and Remy. This was their first time at a track where their World Champion father won the first Australian MotoGP back in '89, and Luca won one race in the rain and finished second in four others. Nice going. Remy had a bit more torrid time of it but still managed two seconds, two thirds and a fifth. Great future for these two I think, but Dad needs to lift his game as a mechanic. Still, Wayne did beat them when they took time out to go kart racing. The boys loved the Island, who wouldn't, and cannot wait to go back.

Over in Italy at Monza, another great track, the cream rose to the top with Ricciardo leading Alexander Rossi home in the second race. I loved the teams explanation why there were "loose bolts," apparently not just one but all of them. The rule only says "tight," but not how tight. Classic motor racing, if you do not define it with a torque value how tight is tight? He did not win the argument though.

A lot is being made about News Corp not being allowed to buy F1 because it will have a conflict of interest, being a media company. How short the memories are. How did all this get started? When Bernie decided to make a bunch of money and sell it to the Kirsch Media Group out of Germany. That's right, the Kirsch MEDIA Group. So what has changed in the last twenty years? If it was good enough then why not for Rupert and Co? I'm sure Rupert can put in place enough cut-outs, like Bernie and the boys have now, to put a fire wall between the company owning F1 and Sky. And why are they only carrying on about Sky? What about Fox and Speed in the US, and all the other stations he owns. We pay for Speed via the cable here in the US, so define "free to air."

Casey won at Le Mans, no surprise there, but Rossi third? That was largely thanks to Simoncelli and Pedrosa coming together and Lorenzo having a bad day, but the Ducati seems to be coming good. The Simoncelli incident earned him a ride through penalty, which has sparked a lot of debate on-line as to who was at fault here. I have not seen anything but the stills, and it does look like Simo did not leave him much room, unlike what we saw at Turkey last week, and he is making a habit of this and making himself very unpopular with his fellow riders. The Tech3 boys did not manage to repeat their qualifying form, and Spies was down in sixth. Marquez finally learned how to keep a four stroke upright and won his first Moto2 race, so look out everyone else if he repeats his form from the 125's.

Rockenfeller won his first DTM race, and about time. It is hard to believe that with all else he has won he has had to wait this long for a good car. Let's hope Grand-Am can bring this series here in 2013. Talking of Grand-Am the race from Virginia started with an hour behind the pace car for rain. Someone finally beat Ganassi and Co, but given how easily Pruit caught the lead car on the last lap I wonder if that was not a set up to try and make the series more interesting. $25,000 reward was posted by Grand-Am for anyone beating Ganassi which received more press than anything else they have done.

Kevin Magnessun won the third F3 race of the weekend at Snetterton after finishing ninth in the second "reverse grid" race with fastest lap of the race.

Bernie made a surprise visit to the reopening of the Austrian track owned by Red Bull magnate, Mateschitz, and told him that even though "Didi" does not want an F1 race, he should have one. Didi probably knows what it will cost him.

After my "foot in mouth," or is it keyboard in mouth, comment about Ricciardo just keeping his hand in he goes and sets fast time, only to have it taken away because a bolt was found loose on the car after qualifying. This sort of thing sounds a bit over the top, like last year when a piece of tape was found on a car. Daniel was philosophical about it though, confirming he was there for the race experience. He did well in the first race, coming through the field from last to sixth, but with another potential problem as he and a few others are under investigation for possibly passing under a yellow.  American Alexander Rossi finished well down, let's hope for a better finish in race 2.

Jan Magnussen's son Kevin won his maiden British F3 race with a couple of great overtaking moves. Let us hope Kevin can catch the breaks better than his father did. Somehow to me F3 is still the class to be in and win. We have F2, GP3, FR 3.5 etc, but this still seems the best finishing school. Many top drivers went straight from here to F1, while it almost seems that with a few exceptions classes like GP2 are for guys who will not quite make it. Still, not everyone is going to be world champion and at least they are living their dream and hopefully having some fun. Speaking of F2, another son of a famous father, Alex Brundle, took pole at Magny-Cours.

Also in France, at Le Mans, Casey Stoner continued to dominate practice and qualifying from Simoncelli and the rest of the Honda gang. Fifth is Lorenzo in front of the two Tech3 Yamahas, with Ben Spies eighth. So four Hondas, four Yamahas, and then the three Ducatis with Rossi and Hayden, who could not repeat yesterday's form. Are we loading an Ark here?

Grand Am is at VIR today, and DMG bikes are at Sears Point, but I don't think anyone is noticing.

Nice to have a comment from an old friend. Larry Spektor worked with me on the '93 US Motorcycle GP at Laguna. Thanks for the comments Larry and glad you enjoy the blog. Yesterday was another technology frustrating day with the log in page not wanting to load and then my cable/internet/phone went out for most of the day.

Not that there is much going on. I don't know how they expect us bloggers to keep going. MotoGP from Estoril is the most interesting with Lorenzo snatching the pole. Seems he has the Yamaha how he likes it, but not perhaps how Ben likes it. Spies is disappointing  us this season, with Colin Edwards on the non-factory Tech 3 bike showing him the way at times. Running his boot camp seems to have given Colin a new lease on life. Rossi is back off the pace after threatening in practice, but Nicky Hayden is even further off. Still, the forecast is for rain for the race, so who knows where they will all end up.

FR 3.5 is at Spa with Canadian up-and-comer Robert Wickens winning race one from the pole. Australian Daniel Ricciardo is not faring so well despite his good runs during Friday F1 practice with Torro Rosso.

Bahrain is hoping to have a race "in the near future." With the FIA sticking to the May 1 deadline that appears to be 2012. But do we really want to go there just because they have had their Saudi mates suppress their subjects?

Indycar is in Brazil. Let us hope the debacle of last year is avoided.

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The earning figures for Formula One are a big story today, with Bernie and the teams getting a raise in income. But there is something wrong here that I need an accountant to explain. My arithmetic obviously does not work in the world of accounting. The gross revenue for F1 is reported at $1.08 billion. The teams received $658m divided between them, not equally of course. Bernie received $7.9m and the net income is $296m. So $117m seems to be an operating cost. It is then reported that CVC LOST $660m! Now to my mind this means that CVC's costs are $296 + $660m, yes/no? Now CVC is a venture capital group, so apart from some management fees, this must be interest on the debt? Is that possible? No wonder they are looking to sell F1. What am I missing?

Joe Saward has a piece that goes a bit further into illuminating the ever shifting world of F1 management.

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

Formula One Administration has just transferred the F1 rights to a sister company Formula One World Championship, which is owned by Bernie's holding company SLEC which is in turn held by - well read it, I do not have enough space. Eventually we get to Delta Topco Ltd which has CVC and others as shareholders. You could lose a lot of money going through that lot, which is presumably the point. Other snippets is the sale of Instanbul Park between internal companies, presumably the F1 track the Turkish Gov't couldn't make pay, for $1, yes one dollar, an $11m write off apparently, but then how much did the Gov't write off? What does that say about the value of all those other monuments to ego and foolishness called F1 circuits?

In other news the Brazilian Federation has asked the FIA to look at the Interlagos track. Pedrosa has had successful surgery to unplug an artery trapped under the ironwork put in his shoulder after his accident last year. Let's hope he recovers quickly and is back in form to mix it with Stoner and Lorenzo. Jan Magnusson's son is setting fastest times in F3 testing, and Tony Fernandes is saying the name row is hurting sponsorship. I know how he feels, sponsors do not like uncertainty, especially over the person selling them something really has the right to it. I had exactly that problem with Eastern Creek when the owners were trying to sell sponsorship for the MotoGP that I was promoting. By the time that was sorted the time left for sponsors to exploit their investment was so short the value was greatly reduced.

Rain is forecast in Malaysia for the F1 race, fancy that, and in the monsoon season too. So, no movable wing and no more answers as to how it will improve overtaking, but there will probably be enough in the wet anyway.

Kimi had his first taste of NASCAR truck racing at a half mile oval and apparently did well. It was behind closed doors, so no real information is available, but it does not sound as if he stuck it in the wall.There are reports he is paying $100,000 a race for the ride, but I'm sure a sponsor will be all over that.