Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Crazy weekend, and the next few weeks with the World Cup, Le Mans, and then Tour de France, without mentioning MotoGP. F1 and NASCAR races. Made it through the Le Mans 24 Hour again! What a great race. As they said, a lot like old times with cars not running like clockwork and some great mechanics keeping the Audis, Porsches and the Toyota in the race and in the hunt. Made it a lot easier to stay awake with so much going on. Close racing in every class, and for a while a race no one seemed to want to win. Every leader ran into trouble, but then fought back.

I heard Gary Lineker has said that football, the English version, is eleven men running around after a ball for 90 minutes, at the end of which Germany wins. Watching them defeat Portugal today you would not bet against them winning it all. At Le Mans lately it seems it is a race in which 55 cars drive around for 24 hours at the end of which Germany wins. You have to admire Audi for their preparation and ability to keep cars in the race. Completely building a new car at the track in a day, to end up second. 20 minutes to replace a turbo, not once but twice, crazy stuff given the temperature it must have been at. Toyota got the 8 car back to finish third, and Porsche were unlucky for their first time back in LMP1.

So who is going to beat the German cars? Porsche will be stronger next year, but so too should Toyota. Nissan is joining them, but it better not be a gimmick like the Zeod. What a joke. They are behind the real cutting edge cars in the Audi, Porsche and Toyota. The same speed and distance with 25 - 30% less fuel. Like F1 we are the real winners in this amazing technology race.

On other matters Marquez keeps winning, as does Jimmy Johnson. The new kart track opened to the delight of the members at the Monticello Motor Club. and there are some more interesting projects in the wings.

Going back to the Canadian F1 race, I cannot get over the way in which Perez could not overtake Rosberg, but as soon as Ricciardo got passed perez he soon dispatched him to win the race. Some how this did not compute to me. Perez has the Merc engine with full power, and Ricciardo has a Renault supposedly down 30 - 40 hp. Shades of Perez not passing Alonso when he had a Sauber with a customer Ferrari engine?

Good news on Michael, let's hope it continues.

I am not talking about the lights at Bahrain but one of the best races I have seen for years! So this is "taxi cab" racing is it Mr. Montezemolo? I saw the look on your face as the Force India steamed past your Ferrari on the straight and as you turned away I thought "he's going home." And he was. What a joke all that BS from Bernie and Montezemolo about the state of F1. Good on Todt for turning them down.

There were passes all over the track and great racing. Ricciardo passed Vettel twice, good on you Aussie, shows how good Vettel really is. The Mercedes pair put on a show, and it was great to see Rosberg's reaction when he got out of the car. I was fearing a lot of pouting, but no. Naturally he wanted to beat Lewis, and only Lewis knows how he did not, but he said on the podium that it was the best race of his life. It looked it from where we sat. The Mercs finally showed their true pace in those last 12 laps after the safety car, pulling out 22 seconds over Perez who also has Mercedes power. Normally two drivers fighting like that slow each other down. The race time was 98 minutes against last year's V8's 96 minutes, so who says these are slow? Allowing for a lot of laps behind the pace car they are probably faster.

Paddy Lowe and the boys must have been dying on that pit wall watching that. I was excited about the prospect of these two fighting even before the race started, and they did not let us down. Good on you Mercedes for letting them race. What a season we have in store.

How Lewis held off Nico on those harder tires shows just how good he is, not to knock Nico, but he is a racer. Not sure how Vettel gets away with running people off the track like that, and what can we say about Maldonado? 5 grid places for that when Ricciardo got 10 for a loose wheel in pit lane? Come on Stewards, sort yourselves out. Shades of Grosjean at Spa.

These new low noses have been questioned already for just the sort of accident we saw yesterday. If it were the Mercedes or McLaren nose it may not have happened, but when changing rules we have to look at all angles of impact, not just from behind.

Talking of exciting races it is now 25 years since the first World Championship Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix at Phillip Island. A lot of memories, and AMCN is having a special edition to recall some of them. Some of them are better left unsaid. It was a very difficult time with much personal pain and stress to pull it off. We stupidly believed that if we showed just how great this race could be we would receive the support we needed. But no, it just brought out the rats who then wanted what we created.

Let us spare a thought for all those who have given their lives and continue to serve to protect our freedom. As we have graphically seen in the Arab world, and especially in Syria, how precious it is and how people are willing to sacrifice their lives to get it for others. I am grateful to have been born at a place and time that has not asked me to make that sacrifice.

So to Abu Dhabi and the F1 race. I did not watch it I confess, I am ploughing through thousands of pages of evidence in a fatal accident to develop an opinion, and it will not be pretty. So I have to go on the reports which have Hamilton and Button quickest, but it is only Friday. Rosberg is doing his usual trick of being amongst the slowest. You would think that signing a contract extension with Mercedes would have sparked him up. So the driver market is slowly being set, but there are a bunch of young hopefuls including Canadian Robert Wickens who drove this morning hoping to impress. 

Alonso and Vettel found the fence at Turn One during the second session. I think I have remarked before how no one had hit the wall here in two GPs, which indicated to me that the drivers were not real happy with the proximity of them and like a street track were keeping a bit in hand. Not so today it seems.

Talking of street tracks, it seems the promoter of Baltimore cannot pay his bills. Despite a very good crowd it cost more to stage the race than they paid to see it. A lesson for New Jersey where the fee is many multiples of what Indycar and ALMS would have asked. They did not have a sponsor you will respond. And how much would that be? It makes no difference, in F1 you don't get the money, Bernie does.

Bernie has finished his time in court and jetted down to Abu Dhabi. There is a lot more to come in this case, none of what Bernie says make sense, especially the arch deal maker being shaken down by a banker. 

Seems Mallya's airline is in big trouble, can't pay its gas bill or leases on planes, and the share price going down faster than his Force India cars. Sorry Sahara Force India.

At last the Bahrain Government has seen sense, or at least the writing on the wall, and voluntarily withdrawn for this year. That was the sensible thing to do all along and hope that by 2012 they will have come to some reasonable agreement with the opposition. They are on the 2012 calendar as the first race, but realistically that should be a provisional like Turkey depending on things getting sorted out there. Nice that Jean Todt is now throwing Bernie under the bus, "the commercial rights owner should have sorted this out." Gutless the lot of them. Interesting that Martin Whitmarsh says there's a lot of things he would like to say once the politics have settled down, Can't wait for that. There is certainly enough blame to go around in this farce. India must be wondering what it got itself in to.

Talking of 2012, Bernie is supposedly waiting for an election in Turkey to renegotiate the deal. One suggestion is Bernie gets the admission money as well! Where is this nonsense going to end?

Over in Montreal, where various Government agencies chipped in to pay Bernie's fee, our world champ added another name to the "Champions Wall" in first practice. Still he did that in Turkey and it did not slow him down one bit and is doing well in the second session so far. Rosberg is not slowing down either being fastest in this morning's session by over half a second from Alonso and then his team mate Schumacher. Early days, but this could be interesting. I started to watch the live streaming on SPEED.com, but work got in the way so I saw very little of it, and I'm probably not going to see much of this afternoons session. Still, got to keep my strength up and eyes rested for the 24 hours!

In England it is raining, shocking I know, but it is not raining on Casey Stoner's parade. He is well clear of Simoncelli with Nicky Hayden  and Cal Crutchlow both doing well. It looks like a lot of the guys played it safe, otherwise they are in trouble if the race is wet. The way Stoner and the Honda are going they are in trouble whatever the weather.

Day off in Le Mans, WSBK at Misano with Checa in his usual spot on the time sheet. Looks like all three championships will be decided early at this rate.

Hot on the heels of the concerns raised about Lotus Renault finances there is a very interesting piece by Joe Saward today on the goings on behind the scenes.

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

As I said, Tony Fernandes only has to wait this out. It also seems the question of drivers is far from over with Grosjean's name being mentioned despite a less than stellar performance last time out in F1, and a falling out between Kubica's manager and Lopez from GenII Capital.

Reports are coming in that the crane at the chicane in Monaco is to be moved so the run off can be moved back another 20 meters. The logic is that an accident there will bring out a red flag or safety car so there is no rush to move a car, but that is not necessarily true if it is down the escape road. Still, as often is the case it is a choice between less than perfect options. I forgot to comment on the removal of Maldanado's car in less than a lap last weekend, that's less then a minute from when the leaders were expected, so great job. If you read the comments my view on tires is "old fashioned'" but perhaps so am I and glad to be. At the Circuit Forum in Cologne last year Hubert Gramling, scientific adviser to the FIA Institute, proved that straw bales actually worked better, how old fashioned can you get! No one is suggesting going back to them as they of course catch fire and make a mess when you hit them, but it goes to show that not all new ideas are better. Remember when catch fences were all the rage, and then gravel, ploughed this way and that, and now we have asphalt everywhere.  Yes you can go under tires, but Perez was not so far from going under the Tecpro, especially if he went in nose first. Anyway, I am happy to spark debate and will publish all comments even if they disagree with me.

It seems that Rosberg is re-signing with Mercedes up to 2016. He must believe Ross Brawn when he says the 2012 car will be "excellent."

Someone not keen to extend a relationship seems to be Virgin who are reported to be looking to tie up with McLaren in a similar way as Force India. Sorry Nick Worth and Cosworth. Still, Cosworth look like picking up Lotus Renault next year. Lotus Cosworth? Now that has a familiar ring to it.

Bahrain's "state of emergency" is lifted today. Now what? The FIA says it will listen to the teams, who object to the calendar being extended but will not come out in public and say they do not want to go. Gutless.