Bob Barnard Track Engineering

I was resigned to listening to the Spa 6 hour race this morning on Radio Le Mans, but thanks to Greg Sarni and his buddy I was told where to find a live stream of the race. It was on a web site I had not heard of, no surprise there, and I think it was a German TV feed, so listened to John Hindhaugh and his mates anyway. It is an amazing lack of vision on the part of TV stations in the US that races such as Spa, with the best cars in the world competing, on I think the best track, are not given any coverage whatsoever. We all know SPEED has gone the way of pandering to the lowest common denominator, i.e. NASCAR fan, but what about espn3.com who are streaming the ALMS series, and just about any sporting event on earth? Versus thinks it is a sports channel, and is there no one out there who can go back to where SPEED started and launch a channel for race fans? I know someone will say there is not an audience for it, but how did the original SPEED gather enough audience to make Fox want to buy it?

It makes no sense to me for the whole endurance race series not to be shown. It would be like showing one F1 race a season. Or one football match. How are you going to build or keep a fan base if you are not showing the whole series? Is SPEED covering Le Mans this year does anyone know?

More to the point this situation shows a complete lack of vision by the ALMS management. If your two key races that you promote, Sebring and Petit, are rounds of the Intercontinental Cup, the unofficial world sportscar championship, why on earth would you not do a deal for coverage of the other races in that series? You wonder why sports car racing is dying in the US. If the FI Teams think the series owner needs to do more to promote it, come and look at what is not happening here!

Peugeot won the Spa race by the way, a reverse of last year at Le Mans where they were fast and fragile, and Audi not quite as fast but luckier and reliable. Good race right through all the classes and down to the wire in most. Ferrari won the GT battle but BMW kept them honest, with Porsche in trouble. The winning Peugeot also won the "green challenge." And why not? As I have been saying, there is no need for another trophy, racing is about maximizing efficiency, so the winning car should by definition be the most efficient, especially if it is a diesel. Let's stop this pandering to the greenies and PC, or should I say BS.

Biaggi wrapped up pole at Monza with Checa still way off the pace. Troy Corser found some pace, or enthusiasm, to put himself on the front row, so tomorrow should be interesting.

Turkey threw up few surprises. I was not surprised the Red Bulls did not go out again in the final Q3 session. It was worth the very small risk one or two guys were going to pip them for the front row to have an extra set of tires. Not sure that this is F1, but it is today's reality. Rosberg followed up his China performance with third on the grid and the Mercedes crew are getting on top of the car set up. Williams lifted their game, but not soon enough to save Sam Michael and co, but Sam says he already has something lined up. Virgin's supposed corner turning upgrade left Glock behind the HRT! Nice going Nick. Lotus are clawing their way closer to getting out of Q1, and it will be fun to watch Kobayashi doing a "Webber" from the back tomorrow. He is a demon overtaker anyway, so watch your mirrors boys.

The FIM "clarified" the claiming rules teams,CRT's, at Estoril. How many of the 16 new MotoGP teams for 2012 will be CRT's I do not know. CRT's are defined as anyone the GP Commission decides, and not one of the Motorcycle Manufacturers Association. They must be "prototypes," so presumably built from scratch, not a rehash of an existing machine. Teams only get CRT status one year at a time, and that status can be removed during the season with one race notice by the GP Commission! How do you put a team together and sponsors on that basis? Why would the GP Commission withdraw the status? Because they are winning? And then what, they become part of the Manufacturers race? We are going to have two class racing in MotoGP it seems. Someone out there must know a potential CRT team and can comment on this.

The other main news story is about News Corp and Exor, the Italian group that basically owns most things Berlesconi doesn't, including Ferrari, so a lot of what was being scoffed at as just ill informed gossip is actually true. CVC has confirmed that James Murdoch has talked to them about their "friendly" intentions. Now there are all sorts of scenarios being put forward for the motives of all these players, so you can take your pick, but those of us who have seen Rupert go from an obscure afternoon paper in Adelaide to a major media player know not to underestimate him.  The choice of words in the News/Exor release is interesting and revealing. They are "creating a consortium with a view to formulating a long-term plan for the development of Formula 1 in the interests of the participants and the fans." Suggests that they are looking to do things differently, and as one scribe said, these words are very similar to when FOTA was looking to form a breakaway series. As I said, is this a backdoor way of doing that?

Interesting weekend coming up with F1 in Turkey, for the last time? Then there is the next round of the Intercontinental Cup at Spa which will see the big boys in sportscars back out for a final warm up for Le Mans, all except Aston Martin. WSBK is at Monza, so plenty going on for everyone. Wonder if the Kawasaki team will get there?

In other news the Indycar teams want to delay the introduction of the different aero kits that were to be possible for the new Dallara chassis. Seems the teams do not want to spend the money it will take to R&D and produce these just so the cars can look different. Why not let them be different? No self respecting top class series can be spec racing. Even Grand-Am has more than one DP chassis, just.

There is a saying, "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics!" One of my favorites is "my heads in the oven and my feet are in the fridge, but on average I feel pretty good." If you look at the F1 race fast laps you see that Massa set the fastest lap in the race followed by Alonso. If you did not see the race you would perhaps assume they won, but Massa had a dreadful time and Domenicalli is "dissatisfied and disappointed" at their performance and is heading back to Italy to look for more downforce. Just shows that being fast over one lap does not win races.

Everyone, including Pirelli, are trying to work out how Perez did the race on one stop. Is his driving style that different, smoother than Button's? Perhaps it was the illegal rear wing. It was not as if he was stooging around at the back, his fastest race lap was quicker than Petrov and Hamilton.

The FIA, aka Charlie Whiting, admitted that the DRS system did not really add anything to overtaking, but blamed the short straight and fast corner onto the straight. Now the last corner is the second of a left/right combination that I would not have thought that fast, especially if you compare the situation at Monza. The logic is that in a fast corner the car following cannot get close enough to effect a pass at the end of the straight, but where do we see passing at Monza? At the end of the straight which follows the parabolica, a scary fast corner. Malaysia will tell us, the corner leading on to the main straight is very slow and the straight longer, but then again it might rain.

Dario Franchitti won an accident marred Indycar race at St Petersberg, despite being last in practice the other day. Perhaps being at the back is a good place to be at an Indycar start. I have asked before and will do so again, why take your show to a place that does not show it off to its full potential? Perhaps Indycar fans just want the crashes? After all Paul Tracy still has a drive.

Montoya failed to convert his pole speed into a race win yet again, another example of one lap speed not getting the job done, which I guess we see in NASCAR most of the time. I saw the last few laps while at an Aussie mates place for a barbie, no not a doll, and was probably the best piece of the race to watch.

David Brabham had a difficult first FIA GT Championship baptism, but showed good pace in practice in the Nissan. Personally I can't see a future for this series, especially when you look at the quality of racing in GT2.

The Boss of the Barcelona Circuit has come out and said that the comments of the Region's new President were in the way of a negotiating ploy to get the future GP fee reduced. He stated the obvious, "It is hard to negotiate with monopoly." In the end all you can do is say no and walk away. He did echo the Presidents comments that due to the inbuilt escalation clause, believed to be 10% a year, the cost of the race by the end of the current contract is "unaffordable."

Interesting in these unsettled times that the Williams float is apparently fully subscribed. There must still be money out there if you can make it look worthwhile, or is it the excitement of owning a piece of an F1 team? Williams CEO Adam Parr came out and said what we suspected, that his team would not have gone to Bahrain if it had not been canceled.

Malaysia, a track built in 1999, is "tired." Strange that tracks like Spa or Monza somehow manage to stay fresh? Perhaps their design does not get old. It was apparently rushed and done cheaply. Really, I bet it cost more than most at the time and took a couple of years to do. Phillip Island cost $5m and was built in less than a year and I do not hear of that being "tired." What they really mean is that the people are tired of it. They had a crowd of less than 100,000 over three days last year, how can you justify the fees for that? The solution? A night race of course. Let's spend a lot of money lighting the track and then hope enough people turn up to make that cost worthwhile. Clutching at straws it seems to me.

The last F1 test is now on March 9 and HRT are reported to be bringing the 2011 car. Ross Brawn tells us he is not concerned about their current form as the car they are running is not what will show up in Melbourne, so let's look forward to that. Red Bull are "sandbagging," and Sam Michael likes both the Pirelli's and Maldonado. Frustrating time of year for us fans isn't it? Who or what do you believe?

The motorcycle world kicks off this weekend at Phillip Island with Checa continuing where he left off in testing by capturing pole for the opening round of the World Superbike. Perhaps Ducati should have dropped the works team in MotoGP and not WSBK? Part of the GP bikes problems are put down to the carbon fiber frame, which is presumably much stiffer than the aluminium. I remember Cagiva coming out with a CF frame in 1990, and having all sorts of problems. As Warren Willling put it, they are starting from scratch as all the previous set ups mean nothing, and it would take a huge amount of time and effort to work out what to do. Cagiva gave up.

Over at IndyCar all is not as well as it seems if Gil de Ferran and Tony Kanaan cannot raise the money to go racing.

Bahrain and Bernie. It is not Bernie's finest hour. He is getting his news from one of his cameramen in a hotel there. What's wrong with watching Al-Jazeera, or better yet consult the British Embassy? Just because it is quiet for five minutes does not mean it is safe to go there. OK, there is a lot riding on an F1 GP commercially, but how can you balance that against a human life. Last year Bernie laughed off the attack on Jenson Button in Sao Paulo as "someone trying to sell him a hat." Insensitive is not quite right, tone deaf might be better. He lives in a different world. He has a history of odd statements, didn't he once say that Hitler got things organised? The Chairman of CVC stepped in then as I recall, and maybe he needs to again.

The UK Foreign Office has issued a warning against travel to Bahrain, so you would expect that as most of the teams are based there with UK personnel that this would make the decision not to go obvious. We seem to be back where we were with Korea, for different reasons. Do we send freight, book flights and hotels or not? If we send the freight it may then not get to Australia. Pirelli are saying just changing the test location to stay in Barcelona is a problem as they have those tires headed to Bahrain. How can you continue to run a world series that cannot guarantee that events will go on? It sends a bad message to your sponsors and fans, and the TV. Some common sense has to prevail here, money cannot be the only consideration.

In a letter to the Editor in this month's Motor Sport a fan decries the need to go to all these "sand races." As he rightly says, if race times are adjusted to make it prime time in Europe then that is where the fans are, so why not keep the races there? Because the European Governments won't  foot the bill. The writer suggest a fans association to pressure for a say in where races go. We already have that. It's an association of us fans that tune in to watch. If we had the courage not to watch those races, and only Spa or Monza or Silverstone, how long do you think the TV companies or these Governments would continue to pay Bernie for the rights? A year should be enough.