Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Well I think the Stewards wimped out on that one. Five grid places for deliberately driving into someone? Joe Saward said it well, "less than severe given what happened." He should be excluded for at least this race. And Sir Frank should have the guts to fire him, deliberately damaging his car. I know he brings a lot of sponsorship, but also disrepute. How is Hamilton reprimanded? Why would he deliberately move right to hit Maldanado, or was it for the pass at the bus stop? That to me was clear cut, Maldanado was wallying around, slow, stayed right as if to give Lewis room and then when Lewis is alongside cuts back left, no problem for me. Has Maldanado been watching "Days of Thunder" too much? I can just see Sir Frank, "now I want you to go out and hit the safety car."

Vettel took pole from Lewis in his repaired McLaren at the last gasp, but tomorrow's race should be interesting. Button starting from 13th, Michael from the back after his loose wheel incident, lucky that was not at Eau Rouge, and Alonso down in 8th after an unhappy qualifying session. Senna drove well for his first drive on Pirelli's after a long absence and outqualified his team mate Petrov by over a second. Ricciardo needs to lift his game, over a second slower than Luizzi is not going to get him into Webber's seat. Mark has predictably re-signed for Red Bull for next year, so Daniel has another year to prove himself, but where? The new owners at HRT will want a Spaniard in at least one of the cars. Fortunately the Stewards waived the 107% rule and all cars will start, including Michael's three wheeler. Not sure what the point of having a 107% rule is if you are not going to enforce it. I can understand Michael, but the conditions were the same for everyone in that Q1 session.

Roman Grosjean predictably wrapped up the GP2 title after finishing third in the Saturday rain affected race, now let us see where he goes next year.

At Indianapolis for the MotoGP Casey Stoner is dominating practice despite being highly critical of the new track surface. It started out very slippery Friday morning and has improved as it cleaned up and has some rubber, but there are comments it is wearing tires very fast. "Most" of the bumps have gone, and Casey has this morning run the fastest lap around here, but still considers it his least liked track. Ben Spies is flying the Americans flag with second fastest, and Colin Edwards is inspired by home soil to be the quickest non-works bike. Lorenzo is not happy in seventh behind Colin, while the Ducati boys continue to struggle, Rossi being the quickest in eighth but over a second off the pace. Let's see what qualifying brings, although of course here in the US SPEED would rather show off-road racing or a chopper show than an actual MotoGP, so we won't see it.

Stories today that the BRDC, owners of Silverstone, are looking to lease the place out now they have spent all that money on it. A one hundred year lease term is suggested, although how anyone can predict what will happen in the next decade I don't know, let alone the next century. $400m is the asking price, so they can then spend all that on their grand scheme of hotels etc. So what does the lessee get, the track? And how does he make any money? I know it is only $4m a year, but then there is the interest or opportunity cost. The BRDC is not making money on the F1 GP at the moment, and I know the place runs all year, but then it costs money to run it all year. It was suggested Bernie might want it, but he know better than most that owning tracks and running races is not where the money is at, he makes his from the poor track owner, just ask him about how well Turkey is going. As I said before, do they not learn from history? Octagon went down this road and bought their way out of the deal, and the Nurburgring is currently in all sorts of trouble with their hotel/theme park/conference center development. Donnington should still be burned in everyone's memory, what a farce that was. Now Silverstone is not so remote as the Nurburgring, but it is not in the middle of Europe either. 

Who would have thought, well I would and anyone else who has watched racing at Spa. I recall being there for bike GPs, now that was scary. They were still public roads with oil and white lines, and Blanchemont had no run off. Not quite the Isle of Man but close.

Anyway we have F1 back with us, even if at a reduced pace. The boys did get half an hour in the dry with Webber fastest, but nothing very exciting. Schumacher's 20th anniversary is getting all the attention. That's a long time to drive and I still say he and Rubens and perhaps Trulli should move over and give the young guys some options. To follow on my comments on GP2 there is an article in Autosport about how hard it is to move up from there and to keep finding the 2 m Euros budget each year when the prospect of an F1 drive is fast disappearing.

Senna is in the Renault and had a crash in the first session, but is quicker than Petrov who is very unhappy with his car. Reports are that it is a financial deal rather than Boulllier expecting Senna to be quicker than Heidfeld. Rumors of Renault's money problems continue. These are not helped by Boullier whining about the money coming to the teams from the Commercial Rights holder and how it is split up. He says that in no other sport does the rights holder keep 50% of the income. Not sure that's correct. One would suspect NASCAR keeps a chunk, although it is fairer, and I'm sure there are others. Anyway he seems to think teams should not have to raise their own money, a bit like Premier League paying everyone to play, can't see that. He goes on to suggest that the current set up that rewards success should be changed so the top four teams get nothing and the rest is shared equally. Goes against Bernie's whole rational so good luck with that one Eric. Bernie's a bit of a "law of the jungle" man, or as Trueman put it, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." You knew the rules coming in, so don't complain now.

A lot of people are all of a lather over a girl riding a MotoGP Suzuki at Indy. No, not in the race, but doing some laps. Like F1 there have been females in racing for a long time, perhaps not in the top class, but back in the days when the 125s and 250s were real classes we had them. Let's not get all gender conscious, if a person is good enough let 'em race, but let's not get into reverse discrimination. On that note Danica has said she is leaving Indycar and going to NASCAR full time. So after never really achieving much in open wheel she has followed the money. Let's see how long that lasts.

I don't know who rattled Max Mosley's cage but he had a Bernie day yesterday, pontificating that "F1 does not always have to be exciting," "It will survive the Gribkowsky scandal," and "the Sky TV deal will be good for fans." Max apparently cannot waste an afternoon watching soccer on TV so likes just the highlights, not someone in touch with real fans I suspect.

David Coulthard is a busy boy, not only driving his Red Bull at Austin he also visited Willow Springs out there in the Mojave Desert to coach Tom Cruise on how to drive an F1 car. What's next on his tour of rocky race tracks? And why Tom Cruise? This is of course the Red Bull marketing circus and not a test team, so I guess why not.

Word today is that work at the Austin track is stopped, and not just to let David drive around. Here is the story:

http://motorsport.nextgen-auto.com/Work-currently-stopped-at-2012-US-GP-venue,28472.html

Now I don't know about you but there looked like plenty to do around that track and I've never known a contractor to stop work because he is ahead of schedule, you never know what's coming tomorrow to delay you. Being ahead is money in the bank, which apparently is what Tavo does not have.

Honda is suggesting that the Japanese MotoGP could go to Suzuki for this year to avoid the situation of teams and riders not wanting to go to Motegi. It would suit me, Suzuka is a way better track, and as they said the 8 Hour is run there so what's the problem? This comes as it seems that not only is Rossi not wanting to go, the team doesn't either. As I already said, they can stay home and lose badly.

News that Bradley Smith is going to get a start with Tech 3 in MotoGP next year, so who is leaving? Colin Edwards is the obvious choice and he and Capirossi are looking for a ride in WSBK for next year. So instead of WSBK being a stepping stone to MotoGP, or an equal series, it is now the retirement league.

They are not the only ones likely looking for a ride. Nick Heidfeld looks like he will lose his to Bruno Senna as early as this weekend, and he is threatening to sue someone if that is the case, but he can hardly argue his performance justifies his retaining it. Not sure Bruno is the right choice though.

Talking of this weekend, the FIA has banned the use of DRS through Eau Rouge during practice and qualifying. Several drivers raised the potential risk, but why does it need the FIA to say don't use it? Surely the drivers can elect not to use it, or will some silly person try it like Luizzi? Eau Rouge is scary enough without trying without downforce.

About half way through the Hungarian GP I had the feeling Button would win it, even though his team mate Hamilton seemed to be in command. It did not turn out the way I had been expecting, but not much did in this rain effected race. What we got was some great clean racing between McLaren team mates, and no team orders here, Horner please take note. We saw Massa give way to Alonso pretty easily, with both Ferrari drivers having their share of off track excursions. Lewis's race was effectively lost when the team, presumably with Lewis's agreement, kept him on the super soft when most of the other top runners went to the prime. Surprising really seeing as how quick Lewis was on those in qualifying. Just maybe that was the problem, he had saved an extra set of super softs in qualifying by using the primes, and that induced them to use them. 

In any event that only got worse when Lewis arrived at the wet corner first, spun, and then copped a drive through penalty for spinning the car back around in front of di Resta. A bit harsh if you ask me, if he had not moved so fast then Kovalainen would have been out on the grass to avoid him, but Lewis accepted his fate with good grace. As Eddie Jordan said, this is a different Lewis than we saw at Monaco and most of the first half of the season. His head is back in a good place and we are seeing some great drives of controlled aggression from him. The final nail was the decision to switch to inters just when the rain had stopped, but he fought back to fourth with his usual grit.

I was surprised to see Button catch Lewis when he had the prime tire and Lewis the super soft, which in theory is almost a second faster. Alonso looked decidedly unhappy with third, his race being ruined by a terrible start and the two Mercedes passing him through the first corner. Mercedes continue to really struggle, but as always passing around here is difficult at the best of times, let alone a damp track and one dry line. We did actually see some good passes though to make it more interesting than usual. Vettel increases his lead in the Championship on a day when he should have lost some ground, so his good luck continues, or is it good team work? Sorry to see the Lotus cars both retire, Kovalainen was having a very good run, and Ricciardo beat not only his team mate but also D'Ambrosio.

Elsewhere a wild card, in more ways than one, John Hopkins, took pole at Silverstone for the WSBK race, but Checa has taken the first race win with rival Biaggi well down. Over in Spa Audi won from BMW and Mercedes after a good race. Audi TV had very good live streaming and an amazing sole commentator that worked for hours on end, knew the cars and all those foreign named drivers. It was not continuous and I admit I did not stay up for it through the night, but saw enough to be entertained. This race saw three of the new McLaren GT cars entered basically as a shake down before putting them on sale to private teams to race next year, and they shook them down a bit harder than even they expected, one car going out to a huge crash in the first hour and another catching fire!

Talking of catching fire, the Lotus Renault of Nick Heidfeld did it again, about the only thing that was on fire in that team. Nick drove it out of pit lane after an extended pit stop where something obviously got too hot as it was trailing smoke from the pit stall. It finally exploded halfway down pit exit when a marshal was extinguishing the flames and let's hope he was not injured, but he limped off. So what exploded? Surely Nick shut down the engine before bailing out? So a radiator or something else in the side pod, KERS? It will be interesting to see if we are ever told. 

So, F1 is off on its holidays for three weeks, so could be a slow August for bloggers. 

Interesting qualifying session today in Hungary. Vettel's car was worked on all night, breaking the F1 curfew, as he was not happy with it, and was fast this morning in P3 and just pipped Hamilton for pole. Obviously the team did not work on Mark's car, he is stuck down in sixth behind the McLarens and Ferraris. I bet that feels good. Hamilton really pulled one out of the bag at the start of the Q3, having got there without using the super soft tire, and must look good for the race with that sort of speed on the prime. Strangely Lewis had a poor P3 and never did set a time on the super softs, complaining of brake problems. The durability of the super soft is questionable, so it should be an interesting race. Lewis will probably start on the dirty side of the track, so it will be tough to jump Vettel at the start, but who knows, Red Bull have not been great off the line lately.

Button showed a renewed pace here and his driving style should suit this place, with Massa out qualifying Alonso for the first time in a while. Contract time? Talking of that, Trulli has come alive and is now very happy with the power steering. Did they fix it or his attitude? Kovalainen did eventually out qualify him and was only about 0.3 seconds off the Toro Rosso of Buemi. Everyone qualified inside the 107%, which did not look likely earlier on, with HRT beating D'Ambrosio in the Virgin.

The fall out from the news of the Sky/BBC deal continues, but it seems the Concorde Agreement did not quite prevent Bernie from accepting a pay-for-view broadcaster as long as some of it was still "free-to-air." Of course the extra TV income helped the Teams get over their conscience about the poor viewers now having to pay 470 pounds to subscribe to Sky. That is a lot of money, and as one journalist points out you could actually buy a ticket to six GP's for that. A poll in Britain shows around 81% of readers on one sports reporter's web site would not pay the extra to watch F1. A major point still unclear is whether the BBC is going to show highlights of the races it does not cover live, or a delayed coverage. Whitmarsh says Bernie has told him that they will definitely show the whole race, but that is not what the BBC are saying. Bernie says the delayed coverage is better anyway as who wants to get up at 4 am to watch races? Well actually I have to Bernie, but it is nice of you to care. Who wants to watch a delayed race when in this day of Twitter and Facebook it is impossible not to know the result?

The delayed date for Austin is seen to have a couple of benefits other than the weather. As I said the other day the Texas Comptroller is only just considering the application for the $25m fee for Bernie, so moving the date back presumably delays when that is paid, if anyone has read the contract. The other is time to finish the track with buildings yet to start, the last we heard they had not been approved. I loved Nick Craw's comment after a recent visit, "a great deal of dirt has been moved."

Spa 24 hour just started and www.audi.tv.com has live streaming.