Bob Barnard Track Engineering

It used to be that a "Grand Prix" was THE motorsport event of the year in a particular country, and each country was supposed to only have one such event. Now we know Bernie has got around that with F1, and here in the US you can and do call anything a Grand Prix, totally devaluing the name. Dorna is not only emulating Bernie but has gone straight passed him in the search for the mighty dollar with now three races in the US and four in Spain. Half the World Championship is run in two countries? Italy only has two, which is surprising given the popularity of Rossi. Can the US support three GP's given the lack of interest in the National Series? There are suggestions that Indy is in trouble, but at least they run a real GP with all three classes. Laguna only pays for the top class to come, and I know it will upset a lot of motorcyclists who see this place as the Phillip Island or Assen of the US, but might they just be the one to go?

"Circuit of the Americas?" Sounds like it should be in Costa Rica or Bolivia. Setting some high standards for this track, let's hope it delivers. I staged an event in Australia back in '88 with Frank Sinatra and Whitney Houston in two concerts, and a whole range of top sportsmen and women over five days. We were silly enough to call it "The Ultimate Event," which it was and still is, but the media spent six months trying to convince the public it wasn't. Hard to fight that. Still Tavo and the boys seem to be in a honeymoon phase. India has done something similar, naming the circuit "Buddh International Circuit," invoking a connection to Buddah.

Bernie is not letting up on the engine debate, and Jean Todt is learning that just because someone voted for it they can change their mind. This is F1, they will do what they think is best for their team now. Bernie has a powerful ally in Montezemolo who continues to agitate for larger engines, a move away from too much aero, and a return to testing. Once he is President of Italy with Alonso as his Prime Minister then it will get interesting.

My buddy Allen Petrich asks a good question. Why are teams allowed to charge the KERS system before the start of the race? You cannot use the DRS wing for the first two laps, why I do not know, but let's be consistent, and avoid situations like Webber's, or the disadvantage at the start to the small teams that cannot afford it. Or is this all part of the "lottery" that F1 has become?

So the first day of the 2011 season has come and gone and what did we learn? The usual suspects are at the top of the time sheet, surprisingly perhaps in the shape of McLaren. They obviously did something special in the second practice as they found around two seconds. It is still a lot like testing, we won't really know I fear until the race who has the best race set up. The tires did not seem to give up as quickly as I expected, with drivers setting fast times after three laps on them. There is still an unpredictability about what to expect every time you go out on a new set, and the Stewards authorised the use of additional tires after there were problems with mounting some. Does not sound like good quality control, more like a lottery.

Chandook said he was glad to be back in F1, all 50 seconds of it. That's how far he got in the Lotus, Turn Three to be exact before plonking it against the inside wall courtesy of a heavy right foot, cold tires and damp track. Lotus must have regretted that decision. They are strangely off the pace they showed in testing where it seemed they had dragged themselves to within two or so seconds of the fast guys, but here they are back where they were last season. Gascoyne says there is a lot more left. Let's hope so, they are barely in front of the 107% rule.

Not so lucky are Virgin who are still 6 seconds adrift, only faster than HRT because that mobile, sorry bad choice, embarrasment only managed one lap with one car right at the end of the second practice. They are due an "early bath" as they say in soccer, barring a miracle. Aussies love a battler, but this is way beyond that now.

The good news for McLaren is not so much the pace they are now showing, it is the reliability that was sorely missing in testing. All the top runners looked good in that respect, and Mercedes seem to have resolved their problems. Rosberg looked like setting the morning's fastest time on a couple of laps, only to run wide and lose time, and Michael is sixth fastest on the day. Massa seems to be struggling, and Alonso did not appear until very late in the morning session for some reason, but was right on the pace immediately, impressive. Renault were strangely off the pace they threatened in testing, but new boy Perez  was an impressive eighth, a second faster than his more experienced team mate.

Adrian Newey says he is confident that they are still up to half a second faster than the pack, and if anyone knows he does. Still tires are going to play a part. Vettel had a large chunk out of a front tire that Red Bull say was due to running over debris on the track. Let's hope so. Domenicali from Ferrari is concerned about the amount of traffic in pit lane if each team is making three stops, and the new pit entry is really tight to accommodate the V8Supercar garage brought over from Homebush. I guess Tony Cochrane did not want his series to look like second class citizens.

It was interesting watching the movable wing in operation during practice, but the FIA are still playing with the rules so it is hard to keep up. The overtaking zone in Melbourne will now start BEFORE the last corner, not sure how that helps, you need the downforce to get through the corner I would have thought, and as soon as you bolt on intermediates you can no longer use the wing. They tried a race simulation during the last half hour of second practice just to totally confuse the crowd. And there are suggestions Red Bull did not use it in practice, so who knows where the times are.

The WSBK is at Donnington Park this weekend and Carlos Checa continued where he left off at Phillip Island topping the first free practice.

Le Mans Series cars tested at Paul Ricard yesterday, with the Aston Martin still to turn a wheel. The first race is next weekend. I did see a piece about the FIA talking to Peugeot about another flip by their new car. It has  had more than few big accidents during testing, although it ran faultlessly at Sebring, and the FIA are concerned about the aero on the car.

I am a little concerned about a report from the Portugese Rally special stage where a wheel came off a car and struck a spectator, and all the driver was reported to say afterward was "I can't believe I have been that stupid." To have crashed I suppose, but I would have thought he might have asked about the condition of the spectator and expressed some regret, or is rallying a sport where the spectator takes their chances?

My April edition of Motor Sport arrived yesterday and Nigel Roebuck has a piece in his column about Kubica's accident and racers. He included a comment from Jimmie Johnson that "the car is never right, never good enough." That struck a cord, for the very best the car or motorcycle is never right, how can it be? They will drive or ride it until they find the limit. I recall after one practice session Wayne Rainey bitching about the bike. "Every time we fix something there is another thing wrong!" I told him of course there is, otherwise you would be doing 400 kph. There has to be at any one moment one component of the machine that is at the limit of its performance and therefore the machines. It may be power, tires, suspension, chassis or brakes, but as I told Wayne, if we find a better tire that will just move us up to the next limiting point which may be the front forks that cannot take the increased load.

Racing is about little improvements and racers who can work with their mechanics to find them and then exploit them. That is what the article said about Kubica, his "mechanics knew that if they find the minutest improvement in the car it will be instantly reflected in the lap times." That to me is the difference between good drivers and the great ones. We know all the guys who make the F1 or MotoGP grid have to be beyond good, but as I have seen, it is the three or four that have the guts, concentration, feel and determination to take it to the limit, and find it every corner of every lap that are the stars. I used to love looking in the eyes of someone like Rainey before a race. They said "If you want to beat me today you are going to have to drive faster and harder than you want to, and don't think you ever have me beat."

If  a driver feels happy or comfortable with a car or motorcycle then he is not going fast enough. Phillip Island is a great example. I can recall driving around this fast flowing track and feeling great, only to find when I returned to the pits I was ten seconds off the pace. Then there was my one and only win in my class at the Australian Hill Climb Championship. Last run of the day, trailing, so gave it everything. Threw my Morgan up that hill and it felt terrible, more off the track than on and I thought I had blown it. Came back down to find I had taken a second off my time, in 40 + seconds and won!

So, it is the real racers who can find that edge, and are willing to keep it there without stepping over it too often, and are never satisfied. That's why Kubica went off an ran a rally, he has to be racing, and more power to him. The great news is he is likely to walk in three weeks.

In Qatar the MotoGP stars are out and Honda in the shape of Stoner continue to show the way, by over half a second, and he said he was only at 8/10ths. Rossi is doing better, but not as good as the private Ducati of Hector Barbera who was third fast, but apparently had a tow from Hayden. Shades of Criville and Doohan. Still early days,  or is that nights? Despite Stoner's dominance there is only half a second between the next nine riders, so perhaps there is a good race is for second.

At Sebring the dark brought the Peugeot back to the top, and the diesels are again heading the timesheet. So much for equalization. Still, we will see in today's qualifying. As my wife commented, Sebring looks better at night.

Talking of equalization, it seems when it comes to driver's salary at Red Bull, some are more equal than others, as someone famous once said.

That's Bernie's latest idea to spice up the show. You never know if he is winding us up or is serious, but I fear he is serious most times these days. So, short cuts at corners did not get a vote and he does not think the wings will work, so let's install sprinklers at tracks and then turn them on with a couple of minutes notice, just for a little while to mix up the order. Why stop there? Why not just turn them on at one corner unannounced, that would really make it interesting. Better still, we could make some money with those viewer texts to choose when to do it or where. This really is getting to be a circus and it is time the Ringmaster retired gracefully.

It seems we do not need rain to spice up the show, the top drivers are now all saying it will be a circus thanks to Pirelli anyway. Three or four stops for tires and a huge drop off in performance that even Jenson Button will not be able to manage. If you read about the World Supersport race at Phillip Island you will know that the Pirelli's had punctures, almost unheard of in motorcycle racing these days.

Bernie is also saying that the Bahrain race needs to be rescheduled before the first GP which is just 25 days away. Mid-season break seems to be favorite, but who's to say the problems will go away by then?

Proton, the parent of the Lotus Cars Group, the sponsors of Renault, are being subject to doubts over the foray by their sibling into F1. Their share price is dropping and the forecast profitability of the Lotus Group questioned. What happens if they lose the court case against the "other" Lotus. All of this smacks of Dany Bahar's ego.

Following my comments on the "old guys" winning at Phillip Island, and my other recent comments on the lack of new blood in motorcycle racing in particular, I was struck by the difference over at NASCAR. Here we have a 20 year old rookie winning the biggest race of the year at his first try. Now NASCAR still has its fair share of "good ol' boys," Mark Martin and Bill Elliott to name two, but if you look at the field at Phoenix there is more younger than 30 than over it I would guess. Brad Keselowski. Joey Logano, Regan Smith, are just three names that come to mind as new boys. These guys not only get into the Sprint Cup they also get good rides and are able to stay there, unlike F1 which seems to suck in new boys with a bag of money and spit them out for the next one.

So why is this? NASCAR has a terrific farm system of short track races all over the US, and then the top tiers of ARCA, Trucks and Nationwide to bring these guys through. Obviously there are many more than those we see make it, but the chance is there, and you do not see the young guys buying their ride, they earn it. This is a very American thing with the NFL, NBA and NHL relying on the colleges as their farm system, and Baseball using the colleges and then their minor leagues to develop talent. F1 relies upon the myriad of open wheel formula to sort out the best, but at what cost to the drivers? At every step the driver has to bring money and it is ridiculous what GP2 costs. Even when they get there a competitive seat is not guaranteed and your time in F1 very short lived if you do not get in to a top team.

So what is MotoGP doing to nurture new talent? Nothing that I can see. Moto2 is expensive for a young rider, and like F1, there is no guarantee you can make the step up. OK, NASCAR is in one country and has control over much of the racing, and MotoGP is international, but through the FIM and the members they have the ability to do something. When I worked for Kenny in Spain we worked with the Spanish Motorcycle Authority, a promoter and the manufacturers to put together a "finishing school" to identify fresh blood, and it did for a while. So it can be done, just needs some foresight and commitment, not just taking from the sport. What is Dorna going to do when Rossi retires?

Nice article on Crash.net about Sir Jackie Stewart's views on the lack of overtaking and Mr. Tilke's tracks.

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/167041/1/stewart_tilke_tracks_to_blame_for_lack_of_passing.html

Joe Saward also has a piece about the Serious Fraud Squad, is there a "not very serious" Fraud Squad? Apparently A1GP is being investigated for losing all that money. It never made sense and the revival as A10GP does not either. There are always people who will look at what Bernie has and think they can do the same.

On a similar note the Two Wheels web site is reporting that the Jerez track is in trouble.

http://www.twowheelsblog.com/post/6050/jerez-de-la-frontera-circuit-may-shut-down-motogp-round-risk?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+twowheelsblog%2Fcom+%28twowheelsblog%29

The model is broken, tracks can no longer make money staging spectator races, even if a huge crowd turns up like they do in Jerez for the MotoGP. Unless a Government is paying do not even start down this road.