Bob Barnard Track Engineering

About half way through the Hungarian GP I had the feeling Button would win it, even though his team mate Hamilton seemed to be in command. It did not turn out the way I had been expecting, but not much did in this rain effected race. What we got was some great clean racing between McLaren team mates, and no team orders here, Horner please take note. We saw Massa give way to Alonso pretty easily, with both Ferrari drivers having their share of off track excursions. Lewis's race was effectively lost when the team, presumably with Lewis's agreement, kept him on the super soft when most of the other top runners went to the prime. Surprising really seeing as how quick Lewis was on those in qualifying. Just maybe that was the problem, he had saved an extra set of super softs in qualifying by using the primes, and that induced them to use them. 

In any event that only got worse when Lewis arrived at the wet corner first, spun, and then copped a drive through penalty for spinning the car back around in front of di Resta. A bit harsh if you ask me, if he had not moved so fast then Kovalainen would have been out on the grass to avoid him, but Lewis accepted his fate with good grace. As Eddie Jordan said, this is a different Lewis than we saw at Monaco and most of the first half of the season. His head is back in a good place and we are seeing some great drives of controlled aggression from him. The final nail was the decision to switch to inters just when the rain had stopped, but he fought back to fourth with his usual grit.

I was surprised to see Button catch Lewis when he had the prime tire and Lewis the super soft, which in theory is almost a second faster. Alonso looked decidedly unhappy with third, his race being ruined by a terrible start and the two Mercedes passing him through the first corner. Mercedes continue to really struggle, but as always passing around here is difficult at the best of times, let alone a damp track and one dry line. We did actually see some good passes though to make it more interesting than usual. Vettel increases his lead in the Championship on a day when he should have lost some ground, so his good luck continues, or is it good team work? Sorry to see the Lotus cars both retire, Kovalainen was having a very good run, and Ricciardo beat not only his team mate but also D'Ambrosio.

Elsewhere a wild card, in more ways than one, John Hopkins, took pole at Silverstone for the WSBK race, but Checa has taken the first race win with rival Biaggi well down. Over in Spa Audi won from BMW and Mercedes after a good race. Audi TV had very good live streaming and an amazing sole commentator that worked for hours on end, knew the cars and all those foreign named drivers. It was not continuous and I admit I did not stay up for it through the night, but saw enough to be entertained. This race saw three of the new McLaren GT cars entered basically as a shake down before putting them on sale to private teams to race next year, and they shook them down a bit harder than even they expected, one car going out to a huge crash in the first hour and another catching fire!

Talking of catching fire, the Lotus Renault of Nick Heidfeld did it again, about the only thing that was on fire in that team. Nick drove it out of pit lane after an extended pit stop where something obviously got too hot as it was trailing smoke from the pit stall. It finally exploded halfway down pit exit when a marshal was extinguishing the flames and let's hope he was not injured, but he limped off. So what exploded? Surely Nick shut down the engine before bailing out? So a radiator or something else in the side pod, KERS? It will be interesting to see if we are ever told. 

So, F1 is off on its holidays for three weeks, so could be a slow August for bloggers. 

Interesting qualifying session today in Hungary. Vettel's car was worked on all night, breaking the F1 curfew, as he was not happy with it, and was fast this morning in P3 and just pipped Hamilton for pole. Obviously the team did not work on Mark's car, he is stuck down in sixth behind the McLarens and Ferraris. I bet that feels good. Hamilton really pulled one out of the bag at the start of the Q3, having got there without using the super soft tire, and must look good for the race with that sort of speed on the prime. Strangely Lewis had a poor P3 and never did set a time on the super softs, complaining of brake problems. The durability of the super soft is questionable, so it should be an interesting race. Lewis will probably start on the dirty side of the track, so it will be tough to jump Vettel at the start, but who knows, Red Bull have not been great off the line lately.

Button showed a renewed pace here and his driving style should suit this place, with Massa out qualifying Alonso for the first time in a while. Contract time? Talking of that, Trulli has come alive and is now very happy with the power steering. Did they fix it or his attitude? Kovalainen did eventually out qualify him and was only about 0.3 seconds off the Toro Rosso of Buemi. Everyone qualified inside the 107%, which did not look likely earlier on, with HRT beating D'Ambrosio in the Virgin.

The fall out from the news of the Sky/BBC deal continues, but it seems the Concorde Agreement did not quite prevent Bernie from accepting a pay-for-view broadcaster as long as some of it was still "free-to-air." Of course the extra TV income helped the Teams get over their conscience about the poor viewers now having to pay 470 pounds to subscribe to Sky. That is a lot of money, and as one journalist points out you could actually buy a ticket to six GP's for that. A poll in Britain shows around 81% of readers on one sports reporter's web site would not pay the extra to watch F1. A major point still unclear is whether the BBC is going to show highlights of the races it does not cover live, or a delayed coverage. Whitmarsh says Bernie has told him that they will definitely show the whole race, but that is not what the BBC are saying. Bernie says the delayed coverage is better anyway as who wants to get up at 4 am to watch races? Well actually I have to Bernie, but it is nice of you to care. Who wants to watch a delayed race when in this day of Twitter and Facebook it is impossible not to know the result?

The delayed date for Austin is seen to have a couple of benefits other than the weather. As I said the other day the Texas Comptroller is only just considering the application for the $25m fee for Bernie, so moving the date back presumably delays when that is paid, if anyone has read the contract. The other is time to finish the track with buildings yet to start, the last we heard they had not been approved. I loved Nick Craw's comment after a recent visit, "a great deal of dirt has been moved."

Spa 24 hour just started and www.audi.tv.com has live streaming.

A great day for Australian sport! Cadel Evans is crowned as Tour de France winner and Casey Stoner wins the US MotoGP. Now if only Mark Webber could have converted pole position in Germany to a win we would have had a trifecta! But it was not to be, Lewis Hamilton and McLaren were not to be denied today, and as we saw in Silverstone, Lewis is back to his old self. Still going for it but without the rush of blood. A very good race to watch and I did not have to wait till noon to watch it thanks to live streaming. Vettel struggled and only took fourth on the last lap. So, is Red Bull vulnerable, or is this just a blip? Alonso carried on his Silverstone form and Massa had a good race, so it seems the Ferrari is back in the fight, although their performance on the hard tire is still suspect. Not sure about McLaren with Button struggling all weekend and finally retiring with a hydraulic problem.

Pirelli seem to be improving the durability of their tires, a lot less marbles to be seen, and the softs lasted well here today. A lot of overtaking and most of it not down to DRS or the tires thank goodness, just good racing. Our other Australian, Ricciardo, finished the race and beating Chandook in the Lotus, not too shabby.

Glock has re-signed with Virgin or Marussia or whatever they are, for another three years, so apart from the problem of not having many options, he must see some daylight at the end of the tunnel. Lotus Renault had a pretty bad day, while Sutil and Force India had a very good one. Poor di Resta was spun on the first corner by Heidfeld and was playing catch up all race. Heidfeld ended up being taken out by Buemi in dramatic fashion, for which Buemi has earned a five place penalty for the next race in Hungary.

Over in Laguna Casey Stoner played it cool for half the race and then took Pedrosa and Lorenzo in two passes that displayed his determination,skill, and guts. After Germany he needed to reassert himself, and he did emphatically.  Lorenzo showed his ability to ride through pain after a massive high side in practice Saturday morning to take pole and then finish second today. I would have given any money he would not ride after that strange accident that took place after the checker and while doing a practice start. 

Elsewhere I was able to watch Grand Am from New Jersey, ALMS from Mosport and Indycar from Edmonton thanks to multi-tasking. Apart from a professional interest all of these were underwhelming. Edmonton's revised track layout is worse than the original and these guys continue to drive into each other at every opportunity. Mosport appear to have repaired last year's damaged guard rail with the same round pine posts that are not to spec and caused the problem last year. Does no one ever learn? Hopefully the new owners will do what is necessary to upgrade the safety at this great layout.  

Going back to F1, it seems the teams were as surprised as I was over some of the rules for 2014 and are saying that they did not go through the correct channels to be approved. So maybe some sense will prevail. There is a suggestion that Bernie paid the money to Gribkowsky not because the lawyers fees would have been more, but the resulting loss from tax on the trust following a court challenge would have been substantial. That would presume that Bernie died before his wife had lived in the UK for less than 18 years, the time to gain residency. Now that is an argument, but given Bernie does not plan to die soon it is still hard to accept.

In a headline that just struck me as funny Pirelli announced it was changing the shape of its tires in 2012. Oval or square? Neither of course, just the profile on the rears to get more contact, but it gave me a laugh.

The big news is that Gribkowsky has finally been charged over the sale of the F1 rights and his role in it and the bribe. Now depending on which web site you read Bernie has been charged, accused or named for his role in this. It seems Bernie and his Bambino Trust collectively earned $66.5 m for commissions, and then paid Gribkowsky $44 m for his role. Now the legality or otherwise of any of this is for a court to decide, but Bernie says he is not bothered about going to the German GP this weekend, so must feel confident. Whichever way this goes, $66.5 m is a lot of money to pay to anyone for assisting in a sale. I should be so lucky.

Montezemolo has announced that Massa will be there in 2012, so the options for drivers at the sharp end seem to be drying up. Red Bull appear to be keeping Mark, and where else would he go? Similarly Lewis appears to have no option but to stick it out with McLaren. Mercedes have Rosberg and probably Michael, although I would move him over for Di Resta for all his promotional value. Renault aka Lotus Cars should have Kubica back and Petrov has earned his seat. What of Toro Rosso? Ricciardo has not been put in HRT for the fun of it, and who knows what the new owners of HRT will do next year, they are already clearing house.

Murphy the Bear has a new column today and suggests Kolles moving to Williams aimed at an eventual Audi takeover of the team. All very complicated, but makes for a good read, and Kolles did get the R10's to run after Audi replaced them. The rest of the column is a pessimistic take on where ALMS is going, if anywhere. I had a good discussion with Tom Kjos who writes the Last Turn Club web site the other week about what we thought should be the path forward for sports car racing here in the US, but who would listen to us anyway?

Pit Pass has a resident cartoonist who has a good take on the Murdoch scandal:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_gallery_image_display.php

For those of you that do not recognize them the three in the background are Briatore and Symonds of "crashgate" fame, and Mike Coughlan of "spygate."

In other news Alguersuari is looking for a poor qualifying so he can save his tires! Great way to go racing, maybe he will like the new shape? McLaren are denying Martin Whitmarsh is in trouble, usually a sure sign someone is on the way out, and are looking forward to having their blown exhaust back after loosing what they believe to have been nearly a second a lap at Silverstone. We shall see if they are competitive in Germany.

Mark Webber has come out and said what I did yesterday, he could race Seb without crashing so they should be allowed to race. Maybe it is not Mark that Horner is worried about after Turkey? Whatever he thought I cannot help but be reminded of why team orders were introduced in the first place when Ferrari with a huge lead in the Championship cynically manipulated the Austrian GP finish. Seb and Mark both lead the Championship by a huge margin, as Red Bull does in the Team Trophy, so I'm sorry, but being scared about both cars crashing out is a bit rich. Both drivers had managed to avoid everyone else during the race till then.

I also said yesterday that Martin Whitmarsh needed to circle the wagons, but there is word today that it is "friendly fire" from inside that he should be worried about. I must say I always assumed he was a fixture, he fits the McLaren mould so perfectly, but perhaps the current level of mistakes is too much for perfectionist Ron.

So Ferrari and Sauber agreed to sign off on the blown exhausts "for the good of the sport." There has to be a good story in all this when someone can sort it out. Paddy Lowe from McLaren says it is not possible to police, but I thought that was what the common ECU was for?

I commented on the stories that Bernie had to be charged in the Gribkowsky case by last Wednesday, but it now seems that an extension of that time has been allowed under a loophole because additional charges were laid against Gribkowsky in May. Rumors are that Gribkowsky is now ready to tell all, should make for interesting reading.

Watched a lot of racing over the weekend on two and four wheels. The British GP was by far the most interesting, with the Tour de France a close second. Grand Am from Laguna didn't do much for me, and judging by the size of the crowd, it didn't do much for others either. I am still at a loss how a Mazda can outperform Porsches, Corvettes and Camaros, and BMWs. Some serious performance levelling here. Not my idea of a GT. Lime Rock ALMS wasn't much better, with effectively two LMP1 cars, and for once the GT's failed to put on a show. At least Grand Am has a field of Prototypes whatever I think of them.