Bob Barnard Track Engineering

The start of proceedings for the Baltimore "Grand Prix" have been delayed. Oh how Americans love to devalue that Grand Prix title, it's about time Tavo put his foot down as he has the only four wheel GP in the US next year. It can be done, I did it for the US Motorcycle GP at Laguna in '93. Anyway the story is the track is ready, they just have to put the perimeter fence back up that they took down for Hurricane Irene. I don't really believe that but I am not there, but some good friends are. Of course we have the now compulsory tram tracks to cross a la San Jose and Detroit to name two. Do we not learn? Traffic is a mess so the natives may not think this is such a good idea. Let's see what happens when we do get some racing. USF2000 supposed to be on track about now but it is not looking good.

Lorenzo is on track in Misano leading the way in the second practice session, but only just. Interesting that Yamaha see this as a "home race," the team is based just down the road. All the usual suspects at the top of the time sheets, with the factory Ducatis way down behind even the privateer team.Over in Brno Checa lead the first practice but was just pipped by Biaggi in the first qualifying session. Biaggi desperately needs to win here with Checa well behind or DNF to have any chance of winning the title this year.

News out today that the British Parliament is to hold hearings on the BBC/Sky TV deal. Seems the story coming out of Bernie and the one from the BBC is not one and the same, and MPs are not happy. As they rightly say only having half the races on BBC is like being slightly pregnant, if you want to watch the other half of the races on Sky you do not get a 50% discount on the fee.

Stories also out today link Toro Rosso with either improved sponsorship from Cepsa, the Spanish oil company owned by an UAE investment group, or that the UAE group has bought Toro Rosso and will move it to Spain. Either way Toro Rosso will get a large boost to its fortunes, in more ways than one.

 

As a few have commented already the FIA and presumably Bernie have lost all contact with the outside world. On the day that news reports tell us of a 14 year old boy killed in clashes with police in Bahrain,

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/08/31/bahrain.death/

the World Council of the FIA unanimously approve a calendar moving Bahrain up to be one of the early GP's just so India does not have to run in the heat. The whole idea of leaving Bahrain till the end was to give them time to sort themselves out, not that that was likely, so why just casually move it back to the beginning? And we lose Turkey from the same calendar, nice one guys.

Meanwhile Charlie has been to India and is very happy with the circuit which is good news for a change. Now to just keep the farmers off it. We have another new track here in the US, the Baltimore Street race for Indycar and ALMS is this weekend so it will be interesting to see how that works. There is a virtual drive on Motorsport.com:

http://www.motorsport.com/#/all/video/main-gallery/?s=2&i=2&id=1209

I will reserve my comments until after the race.

MotoGP from Misano where Loris Capirossi has just announced his retirement after a record 324 races, winning the 125 and 250cc World Championships along the way, the first at my event at Phillip Island in 1990. If you have not seen that race find a copy! Wayne Rainey will also be in Misano, the track that ended his career 18 years ago, what a tragedy.

Elsewhere Gribkowsky's attorney wants the charges dismissed for lack of substance, but the Prosecutor is having none of it. Even if the shares were valued correctly there are still a lot of unanswered questions here.  

Sitting at home yesterday watching the first Sunday of football, American style. The night game was the Cowboys and Redskins, and towards the end there were two incidents where players went down with potential neck injuries. It struck me the difference in approach to the Misano accident at MotoGP. Play stopped, medical staff ran out, the first guy there knelt at the players head and held it in position so as not to endanger a spinal injury. Everyone took their time. There seemed to be no pressure to restart the game despite what must be a similar situation to the MotoGP telecast, if not more due to the network's schedule. The player is given the opportunity to walk off, no one rushes out with a stretcher and throws him on it just to clear the pitch. When footballers can run 40 yds in just over 4 seconds, or less than 20 mph, and bikes are running at over 100 mph, it makes you think. The NFL has learned the hard way about head and spine injuries, and sometimes I wonder if motorcycle racing has learned anything.

Hero to zero? Hamilton is now the one being questioned by journalists over his rashness after his dive down the inside of Massa resulted in broken steering. It is called racing guys, and Martin Whitmarsh rightly has told Lewis not to change. I do not put it in the Vettel at Spa class, even if it was very optimistic. When he pulls these passes off we all applaud his skill and bravery, he seems to be able to create passing maneuvers where others cannot or will not.

The rumors about Lotus switching to Renault power next year seem to have come true with the announcement that they are ending their contract with Cosworth. Interesting decision given that the Williams is doing very nicely thank you with the Cosworth.

The actions of the medical staff at Misano at the weekend have raised a red flag to Paolo Giovagnoli, the prosecutor of Rimini, the City where the track is located. I had forgotten, goodness knows how, that the Italian authorities always investigate a death at a race track. Italian law is different to most countries in that if someone dies then there must be somebody at fault, even if that person is the one that died. Remember Jim Clark's problems after Von Tripps went into the crowd at Monza, and the Williams team after Senna died? The Race Director and the Medical Chief will both be under the gun for the death of Tomizawa. The prosecutor is particularly looking at the handling of the riders at the scene, something we all want investigated.

Martin Whitmarsh, head of McLaren racing and boss of FOTA says that F1 needs to market itself, what billion dollar business does not promote itself? Sounds like a good idea at first hearing, but when I think more about it I wonder what use it is trying to market a product that is not that good at the moment. Yes the season has been better than we expected, but us diehard F1 fans will watch it anyway. It is the new fans Martin is looking to capture. But it is not as if F1 lacks exposure, it is on the TV across the world every two weeks on average. You would have to live in a cave not to notice it. And the TV companies that buy the rights spend lots of time telling us and promoting when it is on, so what more does Martin want? I think of the Olympics and The World Cup. I do not see FIFA buying ads, it is the World Cup sponsors that do that, and the same with the Olympics. Now F1 has very few series sponsors, and those there are do  not seem to spend anything on promoting the fact. I see a similar theme with NASCAR with SPEED and Sprint promoting the heck out of it. So sorry Martin, in the end I do not see that you really have a point.

Talking about having a product you can promote. Watch the video of Chandook's laps of the new Korean track. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/86449. As Chandook says, it looks like a street circuit, and not a good one at that. And boy, is there some work left to do, particularly the top course of asphalt. 90 days curing time anybody? Three good straights, but an awful lot of just one corner after another, follow the leader stuff. Show off your product on that. As readers will know I believe you cannot show off your product if you do not take it to the best venues.

Another terrible accident mars the MotoGP world this weekend with the death of Shoya Tomizawa. Much like Indy last week the track had nothing to do with the accident or the injuries, he was struck by other riders, but the manner in which the incident was dealt with has rightly caused outrage amongst motorcycle enthusiasts.

Anyone at any level of competition deserves the very highest standard of race management and officiating. Obviously a MotoGP event is operating under a high level of pressure, but that is no excuse for what we saw today. The race should have been red flagged to give the safety crews the time to deal with the riders properly, not drag them off the track, dropping Tomizawa at one point, so that the race could go on. The World Superbike race at Nurburgring showed how it should have been handled. I personally do not like red flagging races, too often I see it for no good reason, but when you see that crash it is impossible to think Shoya was not critically injured. How the message was put out that he did not have life threatening injuries is beyond me.

The TV coverage clearly showed a level of care way below what should be expected by riders. If you have a "spade" stretcher, as they did, it is made to come to pieces to slide under a fallen rider to prevent possible spinal damage, not for the rider to be rolled over and dumped on it! Thankfully Redding did not have serious injuries, but no thanks to the medical crew. I saw a comment that it was not the marshals causing the problem, but the medical team. In Italy, the home of Clinca Mobile and Dr. Costa, I am astounded at their performance. As a race organizer I have always made it my business to make sure I had the best available people working the tower and the track, and have made myself very unpopular for it.

When I went to Laguna to promote the Bike GP the medical was one of the high priorities to improve. I took the excellent Medical Chief to another GP to show him his job was to manage and train the medical team, not treat patients. I found the best corner workers, even talking to the SCCA at one point, yes the car guys. When I ran Phillip Island I brought in the pit lane crew from the F1GP, as the local motorcycle marshals had no experience of running a pit lane in these situations. In fact I really annoyed the first motorcycle club to use PI after I restored it. They ran that race very "loosely" as it was "only a club race." I asked where the switch was in their head that they would throw when they walked through the gate at the GP? They walked off and said they would not be coming to the GP, thankfully. Marshals and race officials need to run every race as a GP, that is what the riders are doing, they are learning their craft, and not going that much slower with less experience while they are doing it. It heartened me that after the GP this same club had the guts to come and say that they now understood, and could they please have another chance.

Then there are the corner workers who only turn up race day. Sorry, you need to be here all day every day to learn what to expect under stressful situations. Practice just like the riders. And no moving around to different stations during the week. I don't care if it is more fun, but learn what happens at that station and be anticipating it. Channel Nine used to have their cameramen out there covering the practice from the first turn of a wheel, even if they were not filming, just so they got up to speed. They understood.

What we saw today at Misano was unforgivable, and the FIM needs to take action. If the promoter cannot organize it better than that then he should not have a race, or the FIM needs to step in and train these people and manage the medical.  I am continually amazed that in this day and age when we know so much about how to stage a race properly, we continue to see a lack of care about reaching the highest standards, whether it is track construction or management. There are knowledgeable professionals out there, but too many would be track owners and promoters think they do not need to know, or think they can do it better. Who is enforcing the standards?

Oh yes, Tony Elias won the race, extending his points lead in Moto2, and Pedrosa won the MotoGP race from Lorenzo and Rossi, keeping his championship hopes alive. At the WSBK at Nurburgring the interest for me is not who won, but why Corser was suddenly so far off the pace, and why Leon Haslam is struggling after a great start to the season?

No one seems very impressed with the state of the Korean GP track, with Bernie joking that it will go ahead, even if they have to use tents. That will be the day. Now you could sell tickets to that!