Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Both are in the motorsport headlines today. The hot rumor going around is that Rupert Murdoch, that other Australian, is going to buy F1 from CVC with the help of the Mexican Billionaire Slim. Now Bernie is denying this vehemently which probably means it is true. Slim is involved with Sauber and Perez and his son is an FIA Senator, so deeply into motorsport, particularly F1.  Rupert's Fox owns SPEED, Sky etc and shows the F1 events, so owning it is going to make some sense. The general impression seems to be that even if this is not true there is something going on and people are leaking stories to help in whatever negotiation is going on. Meanwhile the Gribkowsky investigation continues.

Meanwhile the Texas Senate voted not to provide $25m to subsidize the Austin F1 race on the basis that money would pay for a lot of teachers. There are suggestions that the lower house will reinstate the money, but then it will have to be reconciled with the Senate so good luck Tavo. There are signs Governments are waking up that they are subsidizing multi-millionaires. The latest is Germany where elections have given the "greens" a greater say and control, and while they do not mind F1 cars running around in Germany, they do not see they should pay for the privilege. Bahrain is still in turmoil even though the US news at least has forgotten it, but the British papers have not, and with two weeks to the reschedule deadline they hope the FIA are taking notice.

No blog yesterday as I was traveling again to promote my new consulting service, Motorsport Services International. We have a group of world class individuals and companies that cover the complete range of racing activities from track design through construction and operation, insurance, merchandise, food and beverage, and car and motorcycle preparation and management. A one-stop-shop for anything you might need and did not know where to find it.

Bit sad when the big news of the day is Alonso telling the paparazzi where to get off disturbing his holiday. I think most of us would have done the same.

Niki Lauda has jumped on the bandwagon about the sound of the 2013 four cylinder turbo engines, he wants them to be "Lauda." Sorry, couldn't resist that. He hopes that they will emit more than a "faint hum." Did he read my blog of a few weeks ago do you think? I excused Mark Hughes as he would have written his piece around the same time.

There is a petition to save the Nurburgring that has 1000 signatures basically the first day, so be sure to log in and sign it. http://renn.tv/url/petition

Force India appear to have finalized their drivers for this year with Sutil remaining, Paul Di Resta joining, and Hulkenburg the Friday driver. Not too shabby.

Arthur Pic is to drive in FR3.5 this year while his older brother Charles drives in GP2, so now you have a choice and can take your Pic. Seriously though, France has been lacking a top driver lately and now they have Vergne and two other Pics, apologies again, don't know what has come over me today. Must be the lack of serious news.

It is still the "silly season" it seems, with a Spanish web site sending false messages about Santander buying in to HRT. So not to be left out I will pass on a bit of fun I read in Nigel Roebuck's piece in this month's Motor Sport about a pilot coming in to land at Gatwick and announcing to the passengers "Welcome to Gatwick, the only building site with its own airport." That struck a chord with me, it seems every airport in the world, at least the ones I go through, are building something. You hear about problems for airlines making money, but the amount of travel must keep going up to warrant all this building.

Seems like no one is happy about what is happening to the Nurburgring, and nor should they be. A friend, Allen Petrich, asked the question about how the current drivers would fair on it against the likes of Nuvolari and Fangio, especially if they had to drive those old cars. He suggests building a new Auto Union and letting the youngsters try to match the times the old guys set, but it occurred to me that some bright programmer must be able to simulate a race between these guys. There is always going to be talk about who was really "the best" which is usually defined by whoever is doing the talking, and it makes for good discussion and often argument, so maybe we do not really want to find out?

In other bits and pieces Adrian Newey says the RB7 will be an evolution not a revolution, but Red Bull might build its' own engine one day. Don't know why you would want to do that with the new regs being sold as the way to bring the likes of VW and the Japanese companies in. Ferrari is really the only chassis/engine manufacturer that has succeeded on a consistent basis, but perhaps Mercedes will change that, and what of McLaren? BMW, Honda, Toyota and Renault tried it, with Renault the only modern success story, but even they really did not build the chassis.

HRT's engineer says KERS is an inefficient system and is only being used in F1 for the manufacturers to sell it on their road cars. If it is inefficient on F1 cars why is it not the same on road cars? The Williams flywheel system seems efficient enough for Porsche, so perhaps he is just talking of the electrical systems. I am all for using the energy out of the current engines as efficiently as possible and think we are still scratching the surface. Gordon Murray's town car just did London to Brighton on less than a gallon, which must be getting close to 100 mpg, and not an electrical cord in sight. But if we are going to all the trouble and cost of developing these systems and putting them in a race car why are we limiting the amount they can store and when they can use it? It just seems another "push to pass" deal, why not just use the energy as efficiently as you can whenever you want? That rewards the best engineering, which is what most of us want to see, until the FIA ban it.

Talking of HRT they are going to use the 2010 car for the first test so they can try out drivers. Yeh right.

Niki Lauda wants Sutil and Hulkenburg at Force India. Well I suggest he buys Force India, then he can have who he wants, until then who cares and why do we keep reporting what Niki wants? It's like Mosley, just fade away.

I would hope that if you read my blog you know of the Nordschleife, the "green hell" built in the 1920's and one of the most famous tracks in the world. It was deemed unsafe and a new sanitized F1 track built to bear the name Nurburgring, and the Nordschleife looked like fading away for a time. It seems to have a had a revival of late with huge crowds attending the 24 hour races there and I guess it was like so many things in life, you do not know what you have until it is almost gone.

As you will read if you click on the link below is that in tune with the times it was thought necessary to add a large entertainment center to the tracks at the Nurburgring. This featured in the Professional Circuit Owners and Investors magazine as part of the way forward for tracks, but now it seems that the tracks have to support the entertainment. It reminds me of the eighties when the talk was all diversification, until we found that going into industries you do not understand was a recipe for disaster, and then the cry was "stick to the knitting," i.e. do what you know. So as you will read, giving control of the race tracks to the guys who got them into this mess with the entertainment does not sound a smart move, but then again, who said Governments were smart? If politicians were smart they would be making lots of money in business.

http://savethering.org/

So, sign up to be friends of the Ring and let's help save it. At the recent conference in Cologne it was pointed out that there have been no new tracks built in what was West Germany for eighty years, Hockenheim was the last one, amazing. So they cannot afford to lose any.

Derek Hanbidge posted some great photos on FB from the recent Six Hour at The Island, including a couple of nice ones of Wayne Gardner helping his son Remy who is racing a 70cc class, and doing well. Wayne looks great and Derek said he looked happier than he had seen him wrenching and polishing for his son. Nice one Wayne, you must be proud. Don't make it too easy for him though, we need him tough like his old man. Mr 110%. I have had some great moments in my life, but seeing Wayne win that first race at Phillip Island takes some beating.  Thank you for sharing the photos Derek.