Bob Barnard Track Engineering

If my French is correct, very doubtful, Concorde means agreement, peace and all that. Bernie announced yesterday to the world that he has Concorde with "most" of the F1 Teams for beyond 2012, i.e. after the current peace agreement runs out. Of course it is not a peace agreement, it is a way to divide up the spoils of the rape and pillage of promoters. Bernie names Ferrari and Red Bull as expected, and McLaren, which was not. Joe Saward suggests McLaren are just trying to outlast Bernie, which some of us may not get to see on Bernie's current form.

So, now Bernie has most of what he needs to float all or part of F1. Again Joe Saward suggests that the lack of a clear successor to Bernie would put off investors, but I think greed wins every time over common sense.

Meanwhile, out on track in the real world, McLaren are beating Red Bull and Ferrari, and everyone else as they did in Melbourne. An interesting few sessions with different teams being fast at different times, so hard to tell who was doing what. In the end McLaren are fastest, but looked very nervous at the back end under braking with Lewis losing it in Q1. Mercedes look fast, with the car suiting Michael a bit more than Nico it seems. Lotus have speed and it will be interesting to see what Kimi can do from his five grid place penalty, could be fun. You can't help thinking Jenson will have the measure of Lewis over a race distance, but let's see, if Lewis can win the start he might just drive away. There again Michael might just drive the pair of them into the pit wall. 

There have to be some disappointed teams. Caterham looked like they made the jump to the mid-field, but now we are racing they are stuck back with Marussia and HRT, with Petrov giving Kovalainen a hard time, and Force India seems to have lost some of the "force." Williams with Maldanado continue to surprise, but Senna is doing an imitation of his Brazillian mate Massa. Ferrari are probably the most disappointed. Massa managed to get his new for Malaysia chassis within 0.3 seconds of Alonso at the end, but for most of the time he was up to a second off the pace. He cannot be long for this seat. 

Sauber are a bit of a mystery. At one point they are among the fastest, and then off the pace. Low fuel runs?

Let us hope for a dry race as I think it will be a good one. Vettel said that using the hard tire to set fast time was not a strategy for the race, and he may be right, there is not much between the compounds and some cars were quicker on the supposedly slower tire, but as he can presumably run longer than those around him on the grid he just may have made the winning move.

Elsewhere Stoner continues to be fastest in MotoGP testing, but we also have a CRT machine getting in amongst the prototypes, so maybe they will not be a complete waste of time.

Indycar kicks off in St Pete if anybody cares.

Ferrari are to give Massa a new chassis for this weekend's Malaysian F1 GP to see if it is him that is the problem, or the car. There are no shortage of opinions on who should take his place at Ferrari, so I guess most of us have made up our minds already. Perez, Trulli and Sutil are three named this morning, and there has to be others like Bianchi who could step in. Given the form of Vergne and Ricciardo in their first race for Toro Rosso it could be a good idea to give a young turk a go. Alonso is not going to be around for ever. 

Martin Whitmarsh says he his happy Lewis was so annoyed after the Melbourne race, and so he should be. I think I told you the story of my mistake on congratulating Wayne Rainey on a good second place at Assen, and receiving an ear full of abuse. Champions never, ever, want to lose.

The stories continue to come out about floating F1, and Singapore seems to be the favored stock exchange. Bernie has looked at Britain and the US before, but it seems they want a bit too much information about your business for Bernie's taste. Ferrari and Red Bull are not denying they are doing a special deal, and one commentator suggested that Bernie's recent opinion about letting new teams use old cars from the top teams could be targeting filling the grid if teams like McLaren don't want to play anymore. It was also suggested that some teams, like McLaren, have other revenue streams, so sitting out for a few years from F1 would not be the end of the world. 

Well the racing season kicked off with a marathon. F1 practice in the middle of the night Friday and Saturday, Sebring all day Saturday, and the F1 race at 2 am Sunday. Thank goodness Sunday was quiet.

Thankfully it was all worth watching. The F1 race threw up a few surprises after qualifying. McLaren looked like they would run away with it, 0.7 seconds a lap quicker than the Red Bulls who recovered from some poor practice sessions, as we knew they would. Jensen basically did, jumping Lewis at the start, and apparently both cars fueled light in anticipation of cruising to the win. Not sure what went on with Lewis unless he was conserving fuel. I can understand him not catching Jensen, but he seemed to be able to manage the gap to Vettel until the safety car deal. I know good athletes make their own luck, but Vettel sure seems to get more than his fair share. Still, I expected Lewis to go back past as the McLaren was faster in top speed anyway, and with DRS you would expect him to blow past. Not to be, struggled to stay in front of Webber and not at all happy with third.

A lot of drivers would have been, Grosjean for one, and Maldanado after a very strong drive in the Williams which looked good. Not sure what happened to Senna who could not produce the same performance. Ferrari, well Alonso, recovered from a disastrous qualifying to show that the Ferrari still seems to have trouble getting heat into the tires. I expected Montezemolo to have fired them all overnight Saturday. Let's see what Malaysia brings. Massa had another shocker, how long are they going to put up with him, and who is there to replace him? 

Great to see Kimi fighting back after mistakes in qualifying, but presumably they don't have blue flags in rallying or NASCAR. Force India were disappointing after last year and what seemed to be a good test season. HRT. What can you say? Please just go away. Marussia at least qualified, but that's the best you can say, and Caterham must be disappointed after also looking like they made a big step in pre-season. Ricciardo and Vergne acquitted themselves well and well fought Daniel after a fraught start. 

Sauber are about where they were last year, which is not so bad, and it would have been interesting if Michael's Mercedes had not broken so early. Strange how Rosberg was off the pace. The F-Duct is still creating some controversy, but on this showing is not doing a a lot for the Mercedes.

A good entertaining race though, even if Button was not really challenged, and he already seems to be the teams focus for the Championship judging by Whitmarsh's comments. On to Malaysia, and watch out if McLaren put enough fuel in the cars this time.

Much angst in the paddock apparently over the reported special deals done with Ferrari and Red Bull. My assumption that Bernie is planning to float F1 seems to be at the center of this as to float he has to secure the major assets. Why this does not include McLaren and Mercedes I don't know, unless Ron is too much of a straight shooter to agree to a deal that shuts out the rest of the teams. We all know Ferrari have done this before, and Red Bull is all about money. Mutterings of the other teams taking their bat and ball home if this is true.

Sebring produced an interesting race, even with the Audis obviously going to win and duly did. GT's put on their predictable great show, with the Ferraris being fast and fragile, and the local BMWs still capable of producing the goods. The LMP1 HPDs kept the Audis honest though, a good showing for brand new cars. The Dyson Lola was never in the hunt and the ALMS season will have to be all about the GTs on this showing, Muscle Milk will have it all their own way. Still early days. Way too many cars out there this year, we could have done without the LMPC and GTC cars to get in everyone's way. The early story was the FIA/ACO were not going to allow non-WEC cars at Sebring, and that is the word for next year. I can't see Don and the boys being happy with that. It would be nice to see some money spent on the track before then.

I have said for a while that the Pit Pass site is Bernie's PR company, and now I am convinced of it. Following the rumors about Austin the piece today makes you want to throw up in your corn flakes.

http://www.pitpass.com/44849-Is-the-US-GP-on-track-to-transfer-promoter-rights

Now I agree the promoter does not need to be the track owner, I have been there myself with Eastern Creek. In fact the smart move is to have them separated so if one goes broke they both do not go down. So it seems Tavo is a genius, the world authority on F1, Bernie said so if you read the last line. Hellmund is "F1's Captain America and Full Throttle synonymous with the sport in Texas." Funny, but when it was announced he was doing a deal my motorsport friends in Texas had never heard of him.

But he has promoted NASCAR and football. Really? Eddie Gossage promotes NASCAR in Texas as far as know, and who promotes football? At NFL level the teams run their own show with the League, and Colleges do their own thing. So at what level were these promotions?

It gets worse, no one has put together State funding and obtained both F1 and MotoGP events. Well the Australian GP Office is State funded and has run both F1 and MotoGP for some years. So has Malaysia, Hockenheim, Suzuka, Silverstone, Barcelona, Jerez, Jarama, Magny Cour, Paul Ricard, Donnington in the famous 1993 F1 race, Spa, and I could probably go on. All you need is money.

Work is apparently about to resume on site, there was a hiatus while the books were sorted, but now they are all go again, with fill due to be trucked to the site. Hang on, haven't we just been moving lots and lots of dirt, and now you need more? Surely they mean road base? 

I'll let you draw your own conclusions from the article, but as I said, it will be interesting to eventually find out what is going on in Austin.

The big news of the day is that, not surprisingly, Jenson Button has re-signed with McLaren, and looks set to end his driving days there. As others have said, Jenson is driving better than ever and is assuming the role of team leader.

The other story getting a lot of air time is the victory of an English Pub Owner in the EU Court of Justice over her using a foreign channel subscription, Greek actually, to show football without paying Sky's exorbitant rate. The implications for Sky and F1 are not clear as this may only apply to pubs and clubs, but it has Bernie out and about again as you will read in the other Pit Pass story, "Has Bernie lost the plot?" When they run these stories I do have to question if they are Bernie's mouthpiece, or do they have a split personality?

It is one of the oddities of living in the US that kerb is spelt curb. I guess the "curb" is a limit to how far you can go, so it makes some sense, or is it just another simplification of the language that America likes, like harbour and harbor.

Anyway, the bolt down kerbs in Singapore "curbed" the enthusiasm of the teams this morning, or is that evening, when they started to become unbolted during a support race, and continued to give problems during the session. Whole sections have been removed and are presumably going to be reinstalled overnight (day?). Without knowing it looked like the insert in the pavement was not holding, but after four years why would that happen now?

Not the sort of advertisement Singapore is looking for when the whole point of the race is to show off the place. It was a primary concern of mine when planning Adelaide that we should not have a red flag situation, not easy to do on a street circuit.

I had the misfortune of tuning in to Speed for the second practice as the fromsportcom.com site has a tendency to freeze, but even that was better than listening to the inane rantings of Diffey and Co, so I went back to it. 

Practice? Well the results are predictable, Vettel fastest and a big spread of times. McLaren making bad choices and Ferrari looking good on "full" tanks, but how full were they? The track does not get any better and passing will be at a premium. Lots of brake problems. Ricciardo outpaced his team mate to be not quite last, but OK seeing as how he had not been here. Schumacher continuing good form well ahead of Rosberg who seemed to struggle.

Ron Dennis chose this weekend to spell out plans for McLaren Automotive including identifying the US as the biggest market and suggesting a motorsport involvement here. Can't see it in Grand Am can you? Ron is predicting a multi-billion dollar future for the business and a stock market flotation in five years, and who is to say Ron is wrong?

Not much else going on except the continued reassurances over India. Mallya came out yesterday and said the race could be run "tomorrow." Not unless those photos were from a month or more ago, but the FIA say they are "positive" about the situation. Meanwhile the local press are suggesting that with all their money the teams ought to be paying the Indian Gov't to come and race, if they can get a visa.