Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Daniel Ricciardo is on the fast track to an F1 drive, if driving an HRT can be called fast. Be careful what you wish for Daniel. Red Bull have bought Daniel a ride in the HRT Team to replace Karthikeyan, who will presumably get the ride back at the Indian GP later this year. So Helmut Marko wants Daniel to get more F1 seat time, but is not yet ready to ditch either of the Toro Rosso drivers. Who does Helmut want to groom Daniel to replace, that is the big question? I did ask a while ago when was the last time we had two Australians in a GP, if ever, and the answer was we have, but I think only once about thirty years ago in the Alan Jones era. I think the other driver would be Larry Perkins, but I am ready to be corrected.

Following the Red Bull pull out from NASCAR we now hear of another drinks company doing the same. Crown Royal has pulled the plug on the Roush Fenway team. Rats leaving a sinking ship?

A ship that certainly is not sinking is Le Mans and the ACO, with the announcement of the new World Endurance Championship, and now Porsche committing to build an LMP1 car for 2014. Not sure how you design a car for that far in the future the way the rules change, or why it is going to take so long? Porsche must have some information from the ACO on what those rules are going to be. Do we know? Is there some change that will take effect then? Anyway, presuming Peugeot and Audi are still running, and running diesels, we may see of the first time if what they have been saying is true, that a properly funded and designed car can compete with them without all the "equalization."

Talking of engines, no surprise here, the WMC ratified the V6 engine for F1 from 2014.

Take that. You can change the rules but the result stays the same. Vettel and Red Bull cruised to another win in Valencia, with Alonso in the Ferrari the only one who even looked like bothering him. Webber looked at times like he was going to challenge but in the end could not hold off Alonso, and then had a gearbox issue. Why is it always Webber who has the issues? So, not a particularly inspiring race even though there were lots of battles right through the field. Button did show an unlike Jensen streak when he went past Massa at Turn Two like he was nailed to the floor, and got it done when the DRS zones could not, so do we really need this? Lewis continues to hate life. When told to slow down to conserve his tires he says he can't go slower! Then when his tires have gone off and he is told to go quicker he says he can't, doesn't sound like a man happy with his car or his team.

The best part of the race was watching it live on www.fromsportcom.com which showed the BBC coverage with Brundle and Coulthard. I do not have to put up with SPEED and those idiots again! Fox in their wisdom are showing the race at noon today, a part of their four race summer showing of F1 on the network, for some reason only a programmer would know. Due to their expectation that they will have a whole new audience they treat us as bigger idiots than usual. As I have said before, they do not feel compelled to explain the rules of baseball or football every time a game starts, so why do they do it for F1?

I also watched a fair bit of the Nurburgring 24 Hour thanks to a link provided by my friend Greg Sarni, and listened to the Radio Le Mans crew. These guys maintain their obvious passion for the sport and freshness as if they were spectators, while being totally professional and concentrating on the activity on track and not what is coming next or who is wearing what etc. This race has grown in stature over the last five years or so and is becoming a great showcase for manufacturers and new technology and ideas. Over 200 cars, and as one of the interviewees said there are more classes than he usually has entrants. The number of manufacturers was exceptional, it would be easier to say who was not there than who were, in fact I would not like to guess who was not represented. This was backed up by what must be every tire company, with some guys running on street tires. It is in some ways much more challenging than Le Mans, just the volume of cars and the bigger differences in performance on that narrow and dangerous track they call the "green hell." The number of top drivers there this year was a testament to its growth. There was Johnny O'Connell in a Renault Clio! Attendance is similar to Le Mans, so now we have two great 24 hour races.

It is interesting that the F1 Promoters, well 17 of them, wrote to the FIA to tell them they did not want the show if it was a 4 cylinder turbo. Now I have been a promoter and attended meetings with my fellow promoters, and it is hard to get them to agree to anything as we basically compete with each other over everything. A lot like the teams actually, but nowhere near as organized, so this is a new thing we are seeing. I always thought we as a group had a lot of clout, although there were always new tracks or existing ones who would take a race if I didn't, but this raises a new lobby group. I actually thought that a group of tracks that no longer have GP's could be a better bet to put together to start a new series based on better rewards for the guys taking most if not all of the risk. NASCAR's model would be a good start. Anyway, the current group is led by Ron Walker, Bernie's mate from Melbourne, so you can see where this came from, and why they would not support a breakaway series. The threat was to go to Indycar apparently. Yeh Right, let me know how that works out for you

So Red Bull are pulling the plug on their NASCAR team at the end of this season. As someone else asked is the writing on the wall for NASCAR, or is Red Bull just seeing a better opportunity at the US F1 GP as also suggested? Even so that suggests they see NASCAR as on the decline as its viewing numbers must still far exceed F1. They certainly have not conquered NASCAR like F1, but then again they do not have the Adrian Newey of NASCAR.

The FIA has gone a step further in its clamp down on engine mapping by placing the qualifying engine mapping in the parc ferme situation between quali and the race. It seems some teams, Red Bull for example, have been using some pretty extreme mapping for quali, but have to dial it down to last the race. Valencia and beyond is going to be interesting. Ferrari is suggesting that we will see a Championship in two halves. You watch, some bright spark will work out how to remap the engine sitting on the grid, or at the first stop.

Talking of Red Bull, well Torro Rosso actually, they were in Hong Kong for one of their demo runs, amidst rumors that Hing Kong wants an F1 race. Monaco and Singapore have one so why not? Then there are Mexico and Argentina apparently wanting races. Bernie has to be loving this, but I thought "The Circuit of the Americas" was supposed to draw all those Mexican fans to Austin, so why do they need a race? A 25 race calendar anybody?

In an interesting move Ducati are to run this year's engine in next year's chassis in an attempt to fix their current problems. Never been tested so the first practice should be fun to watch.

Engines are back on the table in F1 with a meeting of the F1 Commission tomorrow. Bernie is saying the vote by the FIA to go to 4 cylinder turbo was not valid because Todt bypassed the F1 Commission. The fallout from this is going to be interesting as someone is going to be unhappy.

Going back to the BBC and F1, I had a comment off-blog so to speak that Sky would be the alternative and it is not free to air. ITV is still there, unless someone tells me otherwise, and was until recently the F1 broadcaster. So did they let it go to the BBC as it was not worth the cost so are unlikely to want it back? It is academic, Bernie will just drop his fee won't he? Is that a pig just going by the window?

Exhaust blown diffusers employing fuel ignited in the exhaust pipes are to be banned in F1 from Silverstone onward. It has only recently been explained to most of us mere mortals that there are two types of blown diffusers. The original one cut the fuel and ignition on braking but kept the engine turning over so gas flow remained over the diffuser. Otherwise the extra downforce went away during braking which is not a desirable outcome. This is "cold blown" and as I understand the FIA stance is acceptable. What someone, probably Adrian Newey, worked out was that hot gas worked way better, so cut the ignition but keep the fuel flowing which now ignites in the hot exhaust and gives a large increase in downforce. This uses a lot more fuel, not very green, and can only really be used freely in practice and qualifying as the cars do not have enough to waste like this in the race, which might explain why Red Bull has a big advantage in qualifying which disappears in the race.

I think the FIA were struggling to find a way under the current regulations to ban this and so have come up with the "movable aerodynamic device" deal, the movable piece being the drivers right foot when he takes it off the throttle. Stretching a bit here I think, as does Red Bull who are not happy. They say they need the fuel flow to cool the valves. Funny they did not need it till now? Like all smart ideas it is very expensive and once discovered will be banned.

Lewis is off today playing car swaps with Tony Stewart who was a great open-wheel driver before switching to NASCAR and should enjoy the McLaren around Watkins Glen. Not sure Lewis will enjoy that tractor called a NASCAR. Let's hope they are not on track at the same time, they are likely to run into each other. Lewis' management denies looking for a new ride for Lewis, but this reminds me of Senna leaving McLaren because Williams had a car he could win in. Some odd characters in the McLaren garage and hospitality by all accounts, as one journo said "you can see where Lewis' head is at right now." What does Ron make of all this?

In all the excitement of the Le Mans 24 Hour a couple of things went unsaid. Aston Martin put on a worse display than the Jaguar last year and heads should roll for it. I don't know if the Audi engine guy is right in saying the engine configuration is all wrong, but something is badly wrong at Aston when you cannot do more than three laps in a 24 Hour race! They came out before the race and said that they would probably not last beyond 12 hours, what a great ambition. I know everyone will say its a new car, but both the Audi and Peugeot were new cars this year, the Audi only running one 6 hour race prior to this, and they managed very nicely thank you. It is not as if the Aston was ever on the pace when it was running, which for an engineering company is a sad indictment.

The other story is the ongoing problem of equality between petrol and diesel. The petrol cars were never in the race, way off the 2% and the faster refueling did not help much as the gravity fed flow could not match the increased size of the hose, nice one ACO. Now the diesel guys will keep saying it is because there is no one running a petrol car as seriously as they are, and if there was you would see it up there with them. There is some truth to this, we have not seen a similar effort with a petrol car, but just maybe it is because they know the current rules make it a waste of money?

Monaco continued to give us some major crashes, and thanks to the design of the modern F1 car they all walked away, figuratively. A couple of things stood out in the race for me. "Controlled aggression" is what they say you need around here, but Lewis forgot about the controlled bit. I don't know if it was the mistake by his engineers in not sending him out early in the Q3 session started this, but I am beginning to wonder where his head is at. You know I am a fan and said after Turkey that Whitmarsh should not be asking him to avoid aggressive moves, but maybe he is seeing something we are not, until today. OK, that aggression got him past Michael, just, but his moves on Masssa and Maldanado where not smart. We saw it on the first lap in Monza last year, and just maybe we have gone over that fine line between great passing moves and stupid ones. I cannot help asking where he would have finished if he had just driven a calm race, probably fourth or fifth. His comment about being called in front of the Stewards 5 times in 6 races "may be because he is black" is a very unfortunate statement by someone not in control. Let's hope an apology is forthcoming.

The other thing I cannot understand is why under a red flag teams are allowed to work on the cars and change tires? Number one this robbed us of a great finish and penalized Alonso and Button. I know it is the rule, I am just at a loss at what that is trying to achieve? It was obvious that no one was going to pass once they all had new tires, the only thing the restart accomplished is Maldanado's car being damaged in a crash.  Vettel has to be congratulated on being able to get that many laps out of the soft tire, I for one could not believe he was not stopping again. The track helped of course, but the still had to drive faultlessly. Mark Webber's luck did not get any better with a delayed pit stop.

Aussie Daniel Ricciardo did his resume no harm by winning the FR 3.5 race, while Alexander Rossi seems to have had a good race before tangling with a back marker.

Kimi finished 27th in his Nationwide debut, and did not enjoy it much by the sound of it, complaining about how hot the cars are. The race was on the same time as the soccer, so missed it, but the commentators agreed he drove well, losing time with a pit exit speeding penalty and split splitter, if that does not sound too odd.

Checa is hot at a freezing Miller Park in the WSBK qualifying, nearly a second if front of second placed man Camier, and over a second on Biaggi.

Now I am going to crave your indulgence and talk about soccer and Barcelona. The Champions League Final was a great match, played in good spirit, but Barcelona were just too good for Man U, in fact too good for anyone. Watching the game it struck me that Barca play the game like a bull fight. Barnard's lost it I hear you say, but bear with me. If you have not seen a bullfight it is a mind game between the matador and the bull. The bull charges into the ring, going for anything and everything, much like Man U started. But as with the bull, that aggression is absorbed and gradually abates as Barca exert a little pressure back, controlling the ball and taunting the other team as happens in the ring with the bull. Eventually the matador uses his cape to mesmerize the bull, just as Barca's short passing game and ball control does to the opposition. At times Man U's defence were static, just watching until the "sword" was applied, the rapier pass through the gap to a player open in front of goal. So 3-1 is the result, and some team has to figure out how to match them at this game. Barca controlled the ball for 70% of the time, and this against one of the other great teams in the world!

If I may continue, I could watch Messi play all day, every day. Not only is he the best player in the world today, perhaps of all time, or will be, but his enjoyment at playing is evident whatever is happening to him. Lewis could learn something here. It does not matter if he has just missed a goal or been taken down by a cynical foul, he gets up smiling. Nothing fazes him. His mind must be amazing. I know mine is more like Lewis'.