Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Who watched the Daytona telecasts last weekend? Certainly no one at the track. I can recall in the mid 2000's and before when people would come and camp for Speedweeks starting at the Rolex and stay through the 500, and watch the races. Not any more. One week before the 500 and the camp grounds are nearly empty, and the grandstands are totally empty. Granted a few turned up for the "demolition derby" they now call the "Unlimited." It was limited, to 18 cars, and by the time the race ended there were a lot less. Qualifying had nobody watching.

NASCAR has become a "made for television" event. The fees Fox et al pay are the only thing keeping this alive, you certainly cannot make money from admission any more. Makes you wonder why they are building a new stand at Daytona? The back stretch is coming out and going to Phoenix to replace the old front stretch there. So gone are the days of 250,000 plus at the 500.

There is some hope though with the crop of rookies racing this year. As I said we are seeing a new era with nearly a quarter of the field being rookies, and good ones too. Good racing might just turn this around.

Now I know you were expecting a blog about the economy run that was the Malaysian F1 GP. Well, I think there is enough being said about all that, and I agree. But as Mark Webber said, if it were not for the fact that they have to drive to conserve tires, or in Mercedes case, fuel, then the situation with Vettel would not have arisen. 

As with last weekend, after being up half the night to watch the F1 race, and the aftermath, which was a lot more entertaining, and as it was raining and cold, no soccer thanks to the International break, I was forced to watch the Indycar race. Now I watch it for professional reasons, but it struck me sitting there, why does anyone else watch it? This is a serious question. It goes to the heart of the recent blogs on the death of spectator racing. I also watched the NASCAR race from Fontana which seemed to belie this as there were more spectators there than I have ever seen for a race at that track, notwithstanding that they had some seats covered up. Like most NASCAR races though you only needed to watch the finish.

Seriously though. We have a spec race series, with awful looking cars. We saw stupid driving, including an incident that this car design was supposed to stop, i.e. a car riding over the back of another. The drivers are either never-will-be's, or never were's, mostly from overseas, on a bad race track where overtaking is just about impossible, just ask Castroneves. We have interminable yellow flags, and the road sweepers must have done half the race distance. And they do not even have a female pit reporter! What are they thinking, at least some eye candy for the guys. And then there is Leigh Diffey, enough said.

If anyone can tell me why they watch, please comment.

I had a lazy day yesterday after being up watching the F1 race from Melbourne, and what a good race it was. So, I tuned in to the NASCAR race from Bristol.

Now I should tell you that in US sport folklore there are two stadiums where you cannot buy a seat, you have to wait till someone dies. These are Green Bay in the NFL, and Bristol. Well there must have been an epidemic in Tennessee as to me it looked two thirds empty! Shocked is the only word to describe my reaction. As you will know if you read my blog recently about the death of spectator racing this is how most race tracks look, and NASCAR has been struggling, but this was something different. If you cannot fill more than a third of the seats at Bristol then you are in real trouble. It seems you can tinker with the way the cars look, and I do prefer the current crop, but if there is something inherently wrong then that is not going to fix it. You cannot keep on blaming the economy, it is slowly recovering, and there is a great crop of good young drivers, so what is going on here?

I have seen enough photographs of unsafe race tracks and read enough transcripts of fatal and debilitating accidents at events here in the US to say something has to change. I can no longer go on listening to “that’s how we have always done it,” “we have not had an accident before, “and yes “it was good enough for Can-Am.”  That was only forty years ago, so what’s changed?

Look around, nothing is built or operates “as we have always done it.” Can you just turn up and get on an airplane, and is it driven by propellers? Do men with red flags still walk in front of cars in England? Does LA still have smog now we have emission controls and do cars still do 8 mpg? Does Detroit still build cars that are “Unsafe at Any Speed” as exposed by Mr.Nader? No, no and no. Most of motor sport in the US is operating in a time warp, and seems divorced from the rest of our activities.

Where else can an owner go and build a tower block, road, bridge or airport without resorting to professional services, working to standards and obtaining approvals? In motor sport an owner blissfully unaware of any standards for construction or operation can set up shop and start, and then ten years later say he has all this experience. Yes, usually of doing it incorrectly. There is a great joke about the guy who fell off the Empire State and as he passed some lower windows an office worker asked how he was doing. “So far so good” was the answer.

Every week across America thousands of spectators, officials and competitors risk death and injury by attending local events at substandard facilities run by untrained and unqualified people. That is not totally their fault, the lack of published standards or licensing procedures as occur in most of the rest of the civilized world cause them to be unaware that they are doing anything wrong. The National Fire Protection Authority has a guideline for safe operations at facilities, NFPA 610, but how many people know of it, and as a guideline it has no legal standing other than best practice. It does not cover construction, nor a lot of the operation, but it is something.

The motor sport authorities are diverse in the US under an umbrella group called ACCUS that represents us to the world body, but plays a limited role in National and local events. The variety of racing bodies on two and four wheels makes some unified approach probably impossible. The insurers play a major role in this situation, so are they the ones to fix it?

How is it that the civil authorities do not become more involved, as though what goes on at a motor sport even cannot be criminally negligent? God forbid we get to the situation of Italy where the police and courts become involved, ask Sir Frank Williams how that works. But I see definite circumstances where in my opinion criminal negligence should be invoked, and perhaps this is what is required to make track owners and operators wake up to their responsibility and liability.

The media and the public create an outcry for answers when a high profile racer like Dan Wheldon dies, so what sort of Tsunami of opinion would be created if they knew that it was a weekly occurrence at the lower levels of the sport. Elderly contractors dying after being dragged onto a “hot” track to give a quote on some striping. Young children dying or being terribly burned due to the lack of proper procedures and emergency response? Innocent spectators being hit by debris and being killed or maimed for life because of incorrectly designed walls and fences? And that is the tip of the iceberg, just the very small proportion of the incidents that go to litigation and the even smaller number I get to see.

So, what to do? I can no longer go on accepting this is how it has to be. I don’t know how to change this, but I am going to try, starting now. I will use what is left of my professional life to achieve this. Initially I believe it should start by working with the sport and those involved like ACCUS and the insurers, and groups like the SCCA who have at least attempted to address this issue. Failing that then it is time the public knew, and who knows where that leads. We do not want the Government involved, and I care about the sport too much to close down these facilities. The joke is, and it is a bad one, that in most instances the fixes are not expensive; moving walls, grooming run offs, building proper tire walls and fences. These can be done by the track maintenance or volunteers, and staff can be trained and written procedures put in place; cost and ignorance cannot be an excuse any more for not doing it right. As I wrote the other day, being at a race track does not make you immortal.