Bob Barnard Track Engineering

There are a couple of interesting articles about CVC, the F1 rights owner, and Bernie, and the sale of the shares. CVC has instigated its own enquiry into the events surrounding the purchase of the shares from BayernLB and the supposed bribe paid to Gribkowsky. At the same time it is reported they are head-hunting a new Chairman for the holding company, Delta Topco. This is a non-executive Chairman, so presumably Bernie is still in control, but it points to a lack of confidence. Bernie may not be able to put a woman in charge if he is not calling the shots.

The other piece is in the Pitpass web site where Der Spiegel has done its own digging and come up with its opinion that the shares were not sold below market value. There was an auction with two other bidders and CVC's offer was the highest, so how could Gribkowsky rig the sale to assist CVC? This is Alice in Wonderland stuff. If Gribkowsky did not get a $50m bribe for this deal, where did the money come from and why? Bernie is going to have a field day with the magazines if this lot is true.

The World Motorsport Council met today and decided to give Bahrain till May to decide if it wanted to reschedule the race. All seems quiet to us, but there is a piece on Pitpass from a private citizen in Bahrain describing the ongoing and escalating demonstrations. It would appear that Libya has taken the spotlight off Bahrain whose news organizations are being prevented from covering the demos.

Other WMSC decisions involved the allotment of extra tires, both for Friday practice as "evaluation" for new Pirelli's, but also additional tires for the race. Does someone have a lack of confidence in how long the Pirelli's are going to last?The WMSC has also asked the "Circuit Design Group" to look at how exisiting tracks can be changed to increase overtaking. About time someone woke up that it's the tracks, stupid. Again Pitpass has a nice editorial piece, especially the last two paras:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=43052

In Barcelona we have the first day of the last F1 test, as well as Arsenal playing in the Champions League. At least with the soccer we will know who wins. Today Webber is doing a lot of laps with the quickest at 1 min 22.5 secs, but most averaging 1 min 29 secs, so we can see how the tires are going to slow things down. Button is the only man anywhere near this time, most are 2-3 seconds off with the Virgin 9 secs off the pace! McLaren had everyone going with a weird nose and front wing which they took off after lunch and said it was just to measure the forces on the front wing. Ferrari had another of those "filming days" yesterday at Barcelona and featured a new exhaust layout, but these are all so tucked away it is hard to see what each team is doing. So nothing changes, thank goodness Melbourne is just under three weeks away and we will finally get real on who is doing what.

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.

So Bernie is going to let the Crown Prince decide whether it is safe to stage the Bahrain GP. At least he is not asking the opinion of a cameraman. Maybe Bernie is playing the politics and "letting" the Prince look like he made the decision, or hoping the Prince will cancel so he does not sue Bernie for breach of contract. There are suggestions that the teams have agreed not to go, but do not want to say so for fear of breaching the Concorde Agreement. Insurance is apparently a problem when there are travel advisories by the UK Foreign Office and other like bodies, so there is a "force majeur" situation there that could resolve the teams issue. It looks like a situation where no one wants to make a decision in case they are held in breach of contract, they are all dancing around the subject. The FIA, apart from a couple of inane comments a week ago, are missing in action on this one, afraid of upsetting the Arab voting block I guess. The only people with the courage of their convictions are the demonstrators.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the teams are continuing their Barcelona test. It is hard to read anything into fast laps, especially between different drivers on seperate days, but AT&T Williams keeps a running tally of all drivers on all days, which is interesting if nothing else. Check out http://www.attwilliams.com/test-timings

Rosberg is quickest overall with Vettel, Petrov, Alguersuari, Hamilton and Alonso and Barrichello within one second. Trulli in the Lotus is 2 plus seconds off the pace, which is much better than last year, with HRT and Virgin both over 3 seconds off thanks to Luizzi. Without Luizzi HRT would have been nowhere so they had better sign him up. The consensus is still Red Bull in race trim, but it is still any one's guess.

For those who like to see pairs of cars run around nose to tail for 4 or five hours then Daytona is on today, and yes they changed the rules again making the radiator slot bigger this time, just so they can last 500 miles? Can you imagine F1 doing this, or Le Mans? Just cut a bigger hole in a piece of tin plate boys, all sounds like amateur hour.

The photos of tanks in the streets of Bahrain reminded me of the Tiananmen Square situation, why do soldiers carry out such orders against unarmed civilians? Joe Saward rightly says that all the investment by Bahrain in presenting itself as a good place to visit and do business has probably been lost. Joe also suggests it is not a place that F1 should be associated with, but then again we just extended the deal with China, and I'm sure business will go on. Ever since the Munich Olympics the question of sport and politics has been raised. Still, if sponsors are concerned about their "green" image, I'm sure they are just as concerned about their humanitarian one. I've learned in my travels that there are very different cultures around the world, and we ignore them at our peril when doing business in them.

It seems Bernie's week is not getting any better with his comments on the situation in Bahrain being treated at best as "insensitive." One twitter post says Bernie thinks things are calmer now, (now they have shot a few people.) Not Bernie's words, but you see how they are being taken. He writes off the GP2 race as "only being the Asia series," "not terribly important." For the full piece go the ESPN F1, http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/41200.html

With some spare time yesterday I watched the twin 125's from Daytona, and have to announce that if that is what is going to happen on Sunday over 500 miles I will not be watching. A boring, bizarre pair of races. OK, the drivers are doing what they need to to be competitive, two cars hooked up are close to 10 mph faster than one, and by the second race they had worked out how to keep the car behind cool without having to waste time swapping over. So young Trevor Bayne pushed Jeff Gordon for the whole race. What was going to be his reward? They are not the same team? TV air time? Jeff Burton the winner of race two was pushed by Bowyer his Childress team mate for the whole race  so what did they do, flip a coin to see who pushed who? So what now NASCAR? The reduced restrictor plate slowed them down to about 199 mph, but we still have the strangest racing I've ever seen.

The debate over the Phillip Island MotoGP date rolls on, and the Daytona model might be a good one for Ron Walker to look at. Running the GP and World Superbike one month apart may not work, but one week could be built into a Daytona "Speedweek." If you are a fan of two and four wheels you could actually camp out at Daytona from the Rolex in late January through the Daytona 200 bike weeks in March, with non-stop action, and many do. Bike week is huge, with supercross and flat track events as well as a series of road races from pure amateur through to AMA, or is that DMG these days? In fact most motorcyclists come for the atmosphere and never go to the race. Still does not solve Ron's problem of having the F1 GP around the same time, but as I have said, that should be another "raceweek" with the Melbourne Cup in November.

It seems the Austin F1 track started again. Passers by the site report activity. What's that four starts now?

F1 testing resumes at Barcelona, which seems certain to host the final test as a result of the Bahrain problems. Track was wet this morning and no one is near last years times. Seems we are still not seeing any clear picture although the analysts are saying that from their long run times Red Bull is still the car to beat. Alonso in the Ferrari is topping the times at the moment, as they have done most days, so they must have a different strategy to these tests, or they are just quick. Hold the presses, Vettel just banged in fast time, over a second quicker than Alonso, just to show he can? Luizzi is down to test the HRT this weekend, good luck.

Hopefully Robert is continuing his recovery. Interesting he is apparently expressing his preference for Luizzi to take over his seat. Number one, why should he have a vote, and number two, why Luizzi? Just a good mate, or is it he thinks he might have trouble getting Nick Heidfeld out of his seat again? Loyalty is great, but if Nick is anywhere near the top of the charts at the end of the year who is going to fire him?

CVC have started their own investigation into who paid who for what in their share purchase. About time they got interested, as I have been saying, if the deal was crooked then would it stick? There must be some lawyers out there who can answer that. Who do they tell if they find anything?

The Bahrain GP Organizers are between a rock and a hard place, with Bernie and the FIA coming out expressing concerns about the safety of staging the GP. The FIA spokesman must win an award for the stupidest comment this year. "There are realities on the ground that we need to accept, but the FIA is fully confident, with the Bahrain Motor Federation, that the situation will be resolved amicably." Really? Since when did the FIA become the US State Department? Ask Mubarak how it worked out for him. You have to feel sorry for the organizers who work all year for this only to have a situation totally outside their control dictate things. I know how that feels, and usually it is the weather, but it has been politics too. This weekends GP2 Asia race will be a good indicator of events. So far so good apparently.

Talking of politics, Silvio Berlusconi is in a bundle of trouble in Italy, and I'm not just talking about Tottenham beating AC Milan. Had to rub that in. Do we really think Montezemolo will leave Ferrari to run the country?

Shanghai has re-upped for another seven years, but the Mayor of Shanghai must have been talking to his mate in Melbourne as he says he paid less for the rights this time around. Are we seeing the beginning of some common sense returning? Nah, can't happen can it?

There are stories today that suggest the McLaren is "too radical," too many things to sort out to get it to perform. Reminds me that sometimes the best cars are the simplest, like the FW07. Easy to set up, and fix. You can out- complicate yourself. Now, it is way too early to come to that conclusion, but smarter people than me who were at Jerez are suggesting  that it did not look good in the McLaren pit. People were always looking for the trick to the RB6, and perhaps that was its' strength, there wasn't one. It was just fast.

Vettel certainly does not like things to be too complicated and has reiterated that overtaking in F1 should not be too easy, and that there are too many buttons, drivers should concentrate on driving the car. Mind you, he does not mind complicating his relations with the team by again stating he would like to drive for Ferrari. Even if he does, why keep saying it? What is he trying to do, or is he just naive? Or too straightforward for most folk to believe? Interesting that Horner has come out and said Webber can stay beyond his one year contract, more mind games? Why bring that up now?