Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Happening that is. Rain at Daytona for the bikes and Sebring where Indycars are supposed to be testing. Barcelona is fine, certainly for Perez and Sauber who top the time sheet today, pretty close to Vettel's time yesterday. Massa is next and then Webber. No McLaren today, and times all over the place again. Lotus still have reliability problems and Williams had gearbox problems. I don't know if you have followed the Williams design this year, but the gearbox is so low the top wishbones are attached the bottom of the rear wing central support. Very novel and provides a huge hole for air to the back wing, but as someone said, you then have to use it.

Mercedes have some new parts and Schumacher is only 1.13 secs off the fast time, and both drivers say they are happier with the car, and Haug says they are not running low fuel. Williams and Ferrari have gone down the Red Bull exhaust road rather than the Renault as they think it is the best solution. Still feeding exhaust gas through the diffuser, but at the rear, not in front of the sidepods. I still have not heard or seen what McLaren have done.

The drivers met with the FIA, presumably Charlie Whiting, last evening to discuss their concerns about the movable wing, so watch for some tweaks to the rules, including not using them in the wet as the  change in downforce is thought to upset the car.

The most impressive thing in testing is the amount of laps Ferrari and Red Bull have put together, over 1000 not counting today, so their reliability is not a problem. Their quick too, not a good start to the season for the others.

Well, either the Renault is very good this year or Nick Heidfeld has never shown us his best, but here he is, first day sitting in the car and sets fast time of the day and is currently second on the overall time sheet behind Michael Schumacher. So much for just settling himself in as he said. It is perhaps a bit of both, so I'd say he has won himself the seat. Times are actually closing up today, with Kovalainen only 1.36 seconds off the fast time, but Williams have to be a bit concerned with their lack of pace, unless they are having ongoing issues with the car, which is just as worrying. Apparently the Mercedes set the quick time yesterday on the super soft compounds, but it is still up there today, so they must be doing something right.  Ferrari continue with their consistent fast pace and McLaren is around the place, but Red Bull seem to be not quite up to speed, both Vettel and Webber slower than Kobayashi in the Sauber, but who really knows?

The second GP2 Asia race has been run and won. The inversion of the front of the grid for the second race makes for different winners, which shows just how close these cars and drivers are on performance.

NASCAR has announced that McLaren Electronics has won the bid to supply the common ECU and fuel injection to be used from 2012. Welcome to the 20th Century. It is no secret McLaren have been pursuing this bigger role in racing, with Ron Dennis visiting a race last year, but what about Steve Hallam? Steve came over a few years ago to work for Toyota and Michael Waltrip's team. My suspicious mind wondered back then if there were some ulterior motive. A Trojan Horse?

The IMS Commentator Tom Carnegie has just passed away at the age of 91, and his passing earned him many accolades for being responsible for the growth of the Indy 500. On a similar note British commentator Chris Carter has lost his regular job running a radio show at the Daytona 200 Motorcycle event, much to the dismay of riders and spectators. Isn't it interesting how someone who has no actual involvement in the event can make such a difference to how we fans enjoy it. You know if you read this regularly that I am not a fan of certain commentators, and will actually turn the sound off rather than listen to them. Who can forget Murray Walker who commentated for many, many years on F1, and his legendary "If I'm not very much mistaken," and he usually was, but we loved him for being human and his passion. More TV channels need to take the time to find that special person who can bring their sport to life, without the need to self promote or prattle on for the sake of it. What would the Tour de France be without Phil Ligget?

Yesterday Nico Rosberg was concerned about the lack of pace with the Mercedes, and today Michael tops the timesheets at Jerez, go figure. It seems he had no less fuel than Massa when he did his quick time, so did they find something in the car or is Michael back? Two of the new boys had big offs and bent their toys. Perez and Maldonado both hit something hard, so Maldonado in particular is having a baptism of fire. Alguersuari took note of Helmut Marko's comments that Torro Rosso was not a boarding school, whatever that means, and he is more than ready to replace one or both of the current drivers. Strangely it is not Ricciardo he is favoring but Vergne, but most of what Helmut does is strange. No one answered my question about two Australian drivers by the way.

Button had his go in the new McLaren, but they are still basically doing systems checks, albeit fast ones. Lewis declared he found the car better, which you would hope he would say after all the time and effort gone into it. Lotus had another troubled day, but at the moment the field is covered by just over two seconds, so better than last year. Way too early to judge anything though. Heidfeld gets to drive tomorrow, and Boullier says if he is quick he will sign him. He needs to do something, Petrov is not setting the world alight at the moment. The news on Kubica continues to be encouraging, with Robert vowing to be back before the end of the season, but you would have to wonder why, unless his replacement is not doing well.

Ron Walker, the Australian GP boss is softening everyone up for Melbourne losing the race. Bernie is apparently upset by the remarks of the Mayor. A man not easily upset by personal comments I would have thought. Now Ron did throw in a more telling line that Bernie is concerned that for the first time in 40 years someone is questioning the value of his product. The King's new clothes comes to mind.

Over in Abu Dhabi Ferrari protege Jules Bianchi beat Grosjean off the line in the Asia GP2 race, and kept him there for a maiden GP2 win. He beat a class field, so despite being the winter series this is for real. That other series, Superleague, the one with the soccer team cars, says that it is the best alternative to F1 because it has so many ex F1 stars. Narain Karthikeyan, Sebastien Bourdais, Antonio Pizzonia and Robert Doornbos? Not exactly a stellar cast, and all cast offs. Yes they can drive much better than I, but that is not the point. Let's see someone come through this series to F1, not from it.

A good friend, Allen Petrich, wrote a send up of the goings on in F1 like a French farce. As we say, who would believe it. Following my explanation of the rules for using the movable wings he added that we should make it a Monty Python script. We devise a movable wing to aid overtaking, the teams spend millions to put it on the car, and then we constrain its use inside painted boxes so overtaking is almost impossible. There are definitely mixed feeling about it and as Mike Gascoyne comments we would have missed that incredible race at Jarama when Villeneuve Senior held off all comers for the whole race. Yes we want overtaking, but not some video game, we want Hakkinen and Schumacher at Spa. Lewis says that the extra buttons will be more of a problem in practice and qualifying, when they have no restrictions on using it. That is really going to make qualifying a bit of a mystery for us spectators, almost like having qualifying engines again.

Hamilton also said he is not changing his driving style to suit different cars or tracks, this is who he is and that's how he is going to drive. Good on him, I for one enjoy watching him. Overtaking for Lewis and Kobayashi seems all too easy. Perhaps they could give lessons, or some "brave pills" for the others.  Lewis stirred the pot in Berlin when asked if he thought Schumacher would be better this year. He said he thought Michael would not be much different, but he was welcome to prove him wrong.

Bernie is apparently winging his way to Melbourne for the race this year with his daughters, girlfriend and entourage, to bring some "global prestige" to the event. If this is an unusual occurrence then it just shows how Bernie feels about the event.

Lotus, the green and yellow one, completed an untroubled private test yesterday at Valencia and ended up 18th and 20th on the time sheets in the 1 minute 15's. Not too bad, about two seconds off the quick times, so a big leap forward, and they say they had no time to set the car up. Glock in the Virgin was even faster, so just maybe we will see those teams up amongst the second tier this season. Will make for more interesting racing. Jerez will tell us more, I hope.

Nice to see young American Alexander Rossi moving up to FR3.5 with a top team, Fortec. He finished fifth at a one off outing in Monaco last year and has gone well in testing, so go get 'em Alexander. Bernie or Tavo should pay for a top notch publicist to get his name better known in the US. Then we might see the public wake up, like with Lance Armstrong.

Williams are to proceed with a stock flotation on the Frankfurt exchange. I think it was Joe Saward who suggested that this may not be such a good move. Stockholders care about returns, like CVC, and not results. I think the Washington Redskins are the most profitable NFL team, and this clearly is not related to on-field performance. Managing expectations could be a hard balancing act for Sir Frank.

McLaren "launched" their MP4-26 today in Berlin and immediately started telling us that what we saw was not the real deal, so what is the point? Launches are for sponsors, that is why the launch was in Berlin, for Vodafone. Still, there was enough interesting pieces to see on the new bodywork, and they have gone to the pull rod rear suspension revisited by Newey in the RB5. Forward exhausts are not ruled out, the exhaust and engine were plastic at the launch so we learned nothing. Bargeboards are back despite the rules supposedly being written to eliminate them. Why not write a rule that says "no bargeboards" instead of trying to do it by proscribing an envelope for the body work as I understand they did. So, make the body work narrower and there is room for bargeboards. It is like when they tried to ban ground effects and we saw the cars elevate themselves at the end of the race.

I think it was Ross Brawn who commented on the front exhaust and talked about the value of hot gas sealing the sides, like a skirt, and cold air running up the center. Can anyone expand on this, sounds like the sort of thing our whiz bang aerodynamicists would dream up.

As I said yesterday there seems no consensus coming out of Valencia about who was really the fastest car. Kubica was not very happy despite being quickest, too many problems with the car. As Vettel will tell him, being quick is OK as long as it keeps going. It will be interesting to hear any times from the Lotus test today, hopefully they will have fixed the power steering. Let us hope that they do not have these ongoing hydraulic problems like last year, I thought that was why they went to the Red Bull package. Apparently Tony Fernandes was offered $10m to settle the Lotus name dispute but turned it down. He must be pretty sure of the outcome of the court case, or else is a good gambler.

The Pirelli tires came in for some criticism, "like driving on ice" said Michael, for whom these tires were seen as the saviour of his comeback. They degrade pretty fast by all accounts, which it seems is what Bernie wanted, but he is not driving is he? Jenson thinks they will suit him, and with his style he may be right. There is a very clever Vodafone ad with Jenson and Lewis, let's hope their relationship is actually this good as it will be great for the team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6706Xz6xYPY

The Australian GP is to keep it's 5pm start time, despite the drivers complaining it was too dark at the end of the race last year and the FIA agreeing. What Bernie wants he gets, well almost, he wants it under lights. Add that to the deficit. Geelong, a city near Melbourne, has been suggested as an alternative to Albert Park. Now Geelong has wanted a street race since I was building Adelaide, but it is hard to see why building it in Geelong is any cheaper than in Albert Park? And it is still in Victoria with the same government footing the bill. More suckers for Bernie's show, the world is full of them.

Just to confuse us, or maybe so we are not confused, Peugeot has kept the 908 name for their latest Le Mans contender, and have retained the diesel engine without hybrid, but in V8 format similar to Audi. So now we have two very similar cars, and presumably the same close racing. Let's hope that the petrol cars really are equalized this year.