Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Had a call from King Kenny last evening, very nice chat about old times and the current state of racing. I'm not really surprised, but he is still more in demand for appearances than the young guys, and he says he gets paid more now just to show up than he used to to race. Ah, the good old days. He says he is selling the ranch because he cannot stand still being quicker at his age than all the young guys who come there to train!

You know my thoughts on the failure of the spectator driven tracks as a business model, well New Jersey just filed for bankruptcy, how long has that taken? Good luck with Mid-Ohio boys. Silverstone reported a profit of 2m pounds on a turnover of around 50m. Richard Phillips the MD said “I think we are probably the only privately-funded grand prix circuit that does make a profit in the world but the UK is quite peculiar because there is a huge motorsport following, there's a lot of industry here." Well it is an achievement to make a profit of any sort, but given the level of investment in the facility, which is continuing with the new pit building which is costing around 28m pounds, that is not much of a return. Good job it is run by a club. Hard to see how the numbers stack up though. They run the British F1 GP and Bernie's fee has to be half that turnover.

HRT showed up in Barcelona with this year's car, well almost. Parts are stuck in customs apparently and it will not run today. Isn't the car made in Spain? Day four of testing is again all over the place. McLaren had an engine let go so Button has not done much running, but what he did was slow, only faster than the Virgin which has improved to being 6 seconds off the pace. Mercedes are showing their legs with Schumacher topping the charts, fastest of the four days thus far, and Rosberg carrying on where he left off in third place.  Ferrari still up there, but Red Bull stooging around today. One thing seems certain, race averages are going to be way off the qualifying times.

Daytona bike week is on but who really cares any more other than some die hards? How do you kill what was a real world class event at one time?

Joe Saward followed up where I left off on Bernie's idea of purposely engineering wet races. Encouraged no doubt by Pirelli coming out in support of the idea Joe has really said it all in today's blog on how desperate F1 is becoming.

Check it out at http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

I said Bernie should retire gracefully but Joe suggests he goes off to Las Vegas instead, but he tried that once didn't he? I really like the Ferrari tank though.

Mid-Ohio has finally been sold to Kim Green and his partner Kevin Savoree. Kim is an Australian who has lived and raced here in the US for a long time, most recently partnering with Michael Andretti in the IRL team and race promotions like St Petersburg until Michael kept the team and Kim took the promotions arm. I wish him luck with it, it is a tough sell making money from spectator races as we just have seen at Jerez.

Times are tough for other promoters too, with Korea severely reducing ticket prices to try and fill seats, and Singapore giving large early purchase discounts. Now the prices we are talking about would make the average NASCAR fan have a heart attack, $200 plus, with the most expensive $400. Korea is offering a 50% discount if you buy your ticket this month. Now they are saying they had 80,000 there last year, so doing the math at say an average of $300 a ticket that is $24m. Now Bernie's fee is north of $30m, probably more like $40m, so how do you make money on that? Halving the price even if it doubles the attendance only gets you back to square one. And Austin is going to make money?

Sad to hear that Aston Martin is not going to debut it's LMP1 car at Sebring this year. With Audi saving their new car for later that means Peugeot should have it all their own way, in theory.

Sorry to hear about Sir Jackie Stewart's health problems and hope he makes a full recovery.

And sorry the blog is late. I had an appointment this morning to go and look at some land for a track. Interesting and has potential, so we will see what sort of deal there is to be done.