Bob Barnard Track Engineering

It did not take BMW long to take its' first win in the DTM. Just the second race, and starting from pole. Dr. Ulrich of Audi chose to go to the DTM race rather than the WEC at Spa, so it tells you where his priorities are, or is it he knew Spa was a shoe in? It should have been expected as BMW have not exactly been away from racing, just the DTM when it got to be a tin top version of F1. Racing its' road cars across the globe all these years just meant building one to DTM specs, hiring a couple of drivers with DTM resumes, and off we go. Great to see though, three great manufacturers fighting it out and drawing huge crowds. Probably more at the first race than at the German F1 GP's.

Good to see Robert Wickens, the young Canadian, getting a drive in DTM, not your normal route to F1, but a couple have done it.  American Alexander Rossi is also getting his break and will get a Friday drive at Barcelona in his role as test driver for Caterham. That will be interesting to see.

Elsewhere normal service resumed with Stoner winning in Portugal, but Rossi continues to struggle with the Duke, and whatever happened to Spies? A long chain of discussion on Facebook recently about Ben, but it is hard to understand how his team mate Lorenzo can be challenging for the win, and the Tech 3 pair can be beating him easily on non-works equipment. Ben was the only team mate to get the best of Mat Mladin when they raced in the US, but that was Mat's retirement year, so not a good yardstick? Something has obviously disappeared from Ben's arsenal, perhaps his confidence?

I was able to watch the Spa 6 Hour round of the WEC courtesy of Audi TV on the internet. Had the radio Le Mans boys commentating and picture was great, and no commercials. Despite the obvious outcome of an Audi win we saw an intriguing race, with the Diesels beating the Hybrids, who have some issues to resolve around the four wheel drive. Interesting that Toyota has not followed this path after having tried it. Of course Audi has long had a "Quatro" so marketing may drive the racing, so to speak. Nice to see that did not influence the outcome of the race though with the diesels being allowed to win on merit. Le Mans may be a stretch though. Good races in the LMP2 and GTE classes, with the GTE being won by less than a second after six hours! 

Oh yes, we had in-season testing once again with all the F1 teams except HRT going to Mugello. A very nice track, but much more a MotoGP track than F1 with all those sweeping corners. Grosjean in the Lotus was quick with Kimi declining the opportunity to run, as did the two McLaren boys. Not really much to tell as usual with testing and not all the top drivers. We will have to wait for Barcelona.

The "who is going to replace Massa" game continues with Mark Webber being the flavor this week, although it seems Red Bull are keen to keep him after the recent race form. In a similar vein the new Chairman of CVC has said he needs to be able to replace Bernie "within 24 hours." Presumably not the next 24 hours, but the ones after they carry him out of his office in a wooden box as he has always insisted they will have to do for him to relinquish control of F1.

I settled down yesterday afternoon for a motorsport marathon with Bathurst live for seven hours followed by the Japanese F1 GP. Bottle of red, some cheese and salami and hamburgers for dinner, does it get much better?

Well unfortunately it did not thanks to SPEED and Channel Seven in Australia. It was the worst, or close to, race coverage I have ever been subjected to. If you read yesterday's blog you know I love this race, so it has to be bad if I give up at lap 67 and watch a movie! My Aussie friends were posting on Facebook their annoyance at the number of ads Channel Seven were putting in, about every two to three laps it seemed. To add insult to injury SPEED felt it necessary to go and interview anyone they could find in pit lane even when the race was back on. What on earth were SPEED trying to do? I know you build a following for a sport based on the heroes, but you actually have to watch the sport! I know they pander to the lowest common denominator when it comes to an audience, but this was insulting. Are they trying to capture NASCAR fans?

Now an endurance race is hard to follow at the best of times as strategies unfold over the course of hours, so only seeing snippets made it impossible to follow, so I gave up.

So at 11 pm we turned to Fromsportcom.com to watch the Japanese GP. We actually do put SPEED's coverage on in case the computer stream locks up, but they were still at Bathurst, and stayed long after the GP started. I think it was about lap fifteen by they time they started the race, so if you looked on a web site you knew who won long before you saw it. And no sense of urgency even when they went to the GP, they did the grid walk and all the intro graphics as if there was all day to see this. 

Fromsport did not have the usual BBC feed for some reason so we watched German Sky, and lo and behold their commentators did not feel the need to talk non-stop. We had periods when we could just watch and listen to the cars, please note SPEED.

So to the race. Vettel has been to the Schumacher school of racing with the move he made on Button at the start, and of course got away with it. He says he did not see Button. Well the pit exit lane is not the normal line for taking turn one so I can only presume he expected someone to come up the inside and moved to block him. In that event do you not think he should be looking up the inside instead of driving Button onto the grass? Vettel joked afterwards that having two wheels on the grass did not stop him passing Alonso in Monza, very funny. He said he was looking for Hamilton who started third and behind Vettel. If that was the case why move over and give him the race line? Sorry cannot buy this.

Hamilton and Massa had their by now required coming together at the chicane. Lewis said he did not see him, and was actually taking the normal race line from 130R to the chicane, so he did not purposely move over on him, and presumably the Stewards saw it that way too. Hamilton had a bad race while his team mate drove his usual calm and controlled race and jumped Vettel at the second pit stop and hung on despite pressure from Alonso at the end, but ran out of fuel as he went over the finish line. So he was in fuel save mode for a while there which let Alonso close on him, and then threw in the fastest race lap at the end just to show he could.

Anyway Vettel score enough points running third to close out the Drivers Championship, and Red Bull must win the Team prize if they have not already, although I saw no announcement of this. I'm afraid Vettel is one of those drivers I respect but do not like. It is hard to fathom how he can drive away from some of the best drivers in the world at the start of a race, is the car that good? If so how come he ends up third? It seems from the radio transmissions that Vettel and Webber were told near the end not to take any risks. I presume that means Seb do not risk passing Alonso, and Mark do try and not pass Vettel.

An entertaining race if not dramatic. Ricciardo beat his team mate, so job done for him. His companions in FR3.5 finished off their season by Robert Wickens taking the Championship despite being taken out on the first lap as his rival Vergne also failed to finish. Alexander Rossi ended up third in the Championship, so another big step for him. Someone in the States needs to get behind Alexander and make sure he has the right rides to make it all the way to F1, then we might see some interest here. Magnussen the younger followed up yesterday's win with a close second in the final British F3 race.

Nice to see another Aussie doing well in motorsport last weekend. Well Monday actually as the NASCAR race was rained out and run Monday morning, so by the time I remembered it was over. Marcus Ambrose had a break through win at the Watkins Glen road course, now we need an oval win. Confirms what I always thought, the V8Supercar drivers are as good as any tin top drivers in the world. Just look at how drivers from other series struggle when they come to Bathurst, very few have been successful.

That other winning Aussie Casey Stoner tested next year's MotoGP bike along with most of the others and was still fastest. They all enjoyed the extra grunt from the 1000cc engine. Casey and Lorenzo seem to be waivering about not going to Japan, you can imagine the pressure from their teams, while Rossi now says he probably will not go. Riding for an Italian team lets him make up his own mind presumably. Interesting to know how many Ducatis are sold in Japan though. Just maybe Ducati won't mind one GP where they are runnning around out of contention?

Over at Mercedes Michael says he will definitely be back next year, and Haug says they cannot expect to win for a while. Are the two related? Norbert says it took Red Bull 5 years to get there, but this was a team that won the Championship two years ago, so how does that work? 

Pretty amazing comeback from injury for Dani Pedrosa, beating team mate Stoner and Champion Lorenzo in Germany last weekend. Not a bad race and I still can't work out how Stoner let Pedrosa by at that last corner, but it makes the season interesting. The Ducatis continue to struggle and even though Rossi finished a lot better than his qualifying, they both finished behind the Suzuki! Marquez has worked out how to win on the Moto2 machine and looks impressive, both on and off the bike. Good race again though.

The Japanese MotoGP looks to be in trouble with top riders saying they will not go due the radiation danger, which is a bit rich when they have been riding all year with "support Japan" logos. If I were Honda or Yamaha I would not be very impressed. Run the race and put their top local riders out there.

Pretty lean weekend of racing for me though, so not much to talk about. The Nurburgring will apparently not receive Government support after this year, so it has a problem, and the French seem to think alternating a GP with Spa is the best way to go to restore French pride and bring back a race to Paul Ricard.

The summer break is nearly upon us, so stories are going to be harder to find, unless the silly season gets revved up.

This is getting serious. I did not write a blog yesterday as nothing much is going on, and today is not much different. I am not alone, Joe Saward has had time off since Bastille Day, the 14th, and today only mentioned the Michael Waltrip law suit against Mike Coughlan of "spygate" fame and the Williams team. Mike was working for Waltrip in NASCAR, presumably an old colleague from the McLaren team brought him in, but has since taken up the offer from Williams after Sam Michael gave notice. If that's all the excitement then we are in trouble.

What is serious is Rossi only being able to qualify in front of a stand in replacement for Capirrosi, 16 th out of 17. Missing Jeremy Burgess? Perhaps that is who is the real "doctor." After all Jeremy is the one constant in winning championships since Wayne Gardner's days. Best wishes go out to Jeremy and his wife, we hope her health issues get resolved happily. Meanwhile Stoner was happier with the tires today and put it on pole again. Good to see Pedrosa back in form, and the two Yamahas are not that far off the pace, so it should be a good race.

Both BMW and Audi have released photos of their 2012 DTM cars, and very slick they look too.