Bob Barnard Track Engineering

It is a bit sad when the news includes items like "Santander ups Ferrari presence with a cap deal." A salary cap perhaps? No, they now have their logo on the front of the Ferrari Official Cap. Now I guess they paid a lot of money for that privilege, but personally I don't give a toss. The front of a Ferrari cap should say "Ferrari" or better still the prancing horse.  Santander are certainly throwing their money around at a time when I heard the Spanish banks are not doing so swell.

Is anyone else fed up with the non-stop nonsense about HRT, horrible racing team. They have left or been thrown out of FOTA, they do or do not have more money coming, they are suing Chandook, and they are going to run an "updated version" of the 2010 car this year, i.e. we have no money to make a new one. They need to just go away, as Bernie said, they are an embarrassment. If they were the real deal surely Santander would throw a few caps their way?

According to Helmut Marko every man and his dog are trying to steal Vettel away. This is another man who just needs to shut up and go away. After the Turkey affair who cares what he thinks anymore.

One of my friends commented on the Rossi photo from "Wrooom" that he looks like a clown. Certainly an odd combination of colors, and he has always played the fool to his adoring crowd, perhaps that is part of his attraction. Apparently his shoulder is taking longer to heal than expected. More games, who knows anymore. No I am not a Rossi fan any more than I am a Schumacher fan. There are some people who may be excellent at what they do, but I just do not like who they are. Watching the BSC Bowl game last night I can admire Farley for his ability, but with so much ability he does not need the attitude.

Kimi Raikkonen has been entered in the WRC by Citroen so that ends the "will he or won't he" that has been going on about returns to F1, driving for Ford, or not driving at all. Now I know people say Kimi has no personality, and on occasion may not "turn up" but I still miss him. When he wanted he could really put on a show and F1 is poorer for not having him.

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.