Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Is anyone else tired of this nonsense with bad tyres? One of Bernie's best ideas was the three stage knockout qualifying to make teams put cars on track. Now we have the situation where they are once again sitting in the garage during qualifying to save tires. Of course it is made worse by the domination of Red Bull and to some extent McLaren. Why not just give them one or two more sets? In the race they are still going to have to use both compounds, and gamble on a two or three or four stop race. Better still make the tires better. As the editorial in this month's Motor Sport says the current gimmicks are a band aid to cover up the basic problem with the current car specs.

Then we have Lewis Hamilton admitting in the post qualifying press conference that he will not be able to challenge the Red Bulls tomorrow as he has to look after his tyres! Great racing this is. We also have Vettel admitting his KERS did not work in Q2 & 3. Good, can you imagine how much more than the one second advantage they would have? Let's hope Mark can put on a show, otherwise it will not matter how many DRS, KERS and bad tires there are, it will be very boring.

You all know I am no fan of KERS and the whole green racing deal on the basis that racing is about efficiency anyway. It is nice to read the piece, again in Motor Sport, about the new Audi for Le Mans. Dr. Baretzky, the Audi engine Chief, puts it nicely. Talking of hybrids and why they are not planning to use it he said that at the moment the extra weight on the car would need more fuel to propel it than you are gaining from its use. "The system should pay for itself...Motor Sport should be about the truth: the more efficient, quicker, better car should win, and the rules should be made according to that. The ACO says we have to encourage this technology. Why? If this technology is a better solution, it will come. If we have to encourage it and it turns out to be the wrong route, it is a waste of energy and time." Here here.

The FIA has announced that DRS is so successful we are to get two zones of it at Canada and Valencia! Personally I never saw that Canada has a problem with overtaking with Turn 1, the hairpin and the last corner being full of action in the past. Valencia now is different, it needs all the help it can get. They have also decreed that the DRS cannot be used in the tunnel at Monaco, or Eau Rouge.  It would be a very brave, and stupid, man to try it through Eau Rouge. The tunnel might entice some to try. Why all this manipulation of where and when? If it is so good then rely on the drivers common sense and self preservation to decide when to use it. Or are we protecting the drivers from themselves?

So who watched Kimi at Charlotte? I did, and was very impressed. He kept it going in the right direction unlike some of the much more experienced drivers out there, including his team owner Kyle Bush. Kimi never saw Charlotte until Friday morning and raced there that night! He certainly was not intimidated by running in close company, and the other drivers did not seem to have a problem racing around him. Great job, not that I expected anything less. So now what, Nationwide?

Back at Barcelona we potentially have the situation where the Cosworth teams could protest the engine mapped exhaust blown diffusers. This the off and then on again ruling by the FIA, which leaves the door open as they did not say its use was legal, just that the teams had a stay of when they needed to undo it. That would be a nice mess at the end of the race wouldn't it?

As reported a few months ago the success of the greens in recent German elections has made the support for the German GP unlikely to continue past 2015, two more races at the Nurburgring as it alternates with Hockenheim so that track only loses half as much!

It took Kimi to make me watch the NASCAR Camping World Series! Me and a lot of others I suspect. Watching him out on a mile and a half tri-oval for the first time I thought he did really well, although the truck was so loose it looked like rallying at times. Still, his reflexes and ability kept it on the track and tonight's race should be fun. You have to admire the guy, just like the old days when F1 drivers drove everything and raced every weekend, sometimes two races a weekend in Europe and America. F1's loss is the world's gain.

The really big news of the weekend for me is the ACO moving to live up to it's regulation on parity between the diesels and petrol cars. Petrol cars will have an air restrictor increase of 0.3 mm and can lose 10 kg, and if they cannot take weight off the car then they get a 0.5 mm increase. In addition the fuel hose for the petrol cars is increased by 10 mm, nearly half an inch, and the diesels decreased by 0.3 mm, so faster refuelling for the petrol cars. The ACO have made the changes after seeing all the new cars in action at Spa for the first time, and believe they will allow the petrol cars to do an extra 5 laps during the 24 hours. The older ORECA Peugeot benefits from a 15 kg weight reduction. It will be interesting to see how all these pan out in a few weeks time.

F1 is in Barcelona and not much has changed, Red Bull and McLaren on top with Alonso and Ferrari fifth. Mercedes big step forward has not improved their position. News is that Williams are the team that pushed the FIA to act on the engine mapping, but it seems that Cosworth are the problem in not being able to match the big guys. The top teams are of course resisting any changes, as they are the new engine for 2013. The opposition to the change to 4 cylinder turbos is growing, with Renault apparently the only manufacturer now in favor, for obvious reasons. Talking of Renault, the big rumor from Barcelona is that Kubica has signed to drive for Ferrari, the latest in a long line of drivers similarly rumored to go there. Massa must be feeling very unloved, despite Montezemolo telling the world Massa will drive for them next year. He did not look very happy with the car during practice.

The gap between the teams seems to be growing, with HRT still 7 secs off the pace, but then Lotus and Force India are around 4 secs off, and so on up the order. Alonso is a second off, and you quickly get to 2 seconds around tenth place. On these times the HRT are in danger of not making the cut at their home race, but I guess with Q1 times on hards they may make it. Lotus seem to have made the jump across the gap to the midfield teams, only to see the front of the pack just as far away as ever.

Not good. That is the prognosis of Murphy The Bear, and he should know. His latest blog is as always to the point, but depressing for North American fans:

http://murphythebear.com/blog/index.php/2011/05/19/190-assessing-alms-and-grand-am-prospects/#more-1089

It seems the ALMS "Game Changing" TV package is so good their chief of TV got fired for it. It is also a sad day for racing when Audi can sell more cars from plain old ads than from winning on a race track. "Win on Sunday, No One Notices Monday?"

The blog also picks up on the plight of NASCAR. As my readers will know I have been saying this is not just an "economy thing," but a lot of people do not want to believe it. On a similar note, I suggested that the VIR Grand-Am race could have been a fix for the Ganassi team to get beaten, but even I did not realize that the winning car is  associated with Daytona, so the money went from one pocket to another as Murphy points out.

The Bahrain saga continues, with the June 3 deadline being real now apparently. The latest is for India to move to December and give Bahrain it's October date. Is this more because India will not be finished by October?

I had to laugh when I read that Bathurst is "secure" until 2034! Who knows what we will be racing by then, and whatever it is Bathurst will always be secure. V8Supercars needs Bathurst more than Bathurst needs them, so who is securing who?

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.

So now we know what the proposed changes are to Abu Dhabi to make it more overtaking "friendly." They start with the 5-6 chicane before the Turn 7 hairpin. Now Turn 7 looks like the Adelaide hairpin which is a key overtaking spot, in Adelaide. But what do we do in A-D? We put great big grandstands around it so there is no run-off. Solution? Put in a chicane before you arrive there. That kills the whole deal, so what are we going to do? Widen it. OK, making it wider gives some options for up-and-under, but not sure of this obsession with making corners wider. Adelaide is 40 feet and works just fine. Have cars got wider? Not that I know of. It is like a friend suggested Phillip Island needed to be wider. Have motorcycles become wider since Gardner, Rainey et al put on those great races in '89 and '90? Perhaps these guys need to give lessons if the current crop cannot pass on a 40 feet wide pavement.

Then there is the off-camber corner after the Turn 9 hairpin that they are going to turn into a "banked" corner. Now I always thought adverse camber, or off-camber corners were a no-no anyway and could not work out why they were built at A-D anyway. Lastly there is 13-14 they are going to turn into a sweeper for "better flow" at the end of the lap. Oh goody.

Bernie received an open letter from the opposition in Bahrain telling him to stay away until basic human rights are in place. That could take a while. Meanwhile Bernie says he would rather retire than work for people he does not like, presumably Rupert Murdoch and Carlos Slim. But I thought F1 was not for sale? Part of the CVC empire is not doing so well. Pit Pass web site tells us that the hospitality arm lost money again last year despite charging $4500 per head for the privilege of using it for the weekend! Must be serving some great champagne.

Back to the racing. Christian Horner is said to be re-evaluating the benefit of qualifying given Mark Webber's great drive in China. He is probably not alone, and I heard the Radio Le Mans boys talking about just this last week. It is another NASCAR type situation where your qualifying position does not really matter as long as you stay out of trouble. So, the fight might be to see who can go slowest in Q1 so you miss out but conserve your tires. Reminds me of a slow bicycle race. Or do the three sessions on one set of hards? Doesn't sound like F1 to me.