Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Following my comments on the "old guys" winning at Phillip Island, and my other recent comments on the lack of new blood in motorcycle racing in particular, I was struck by the difference over at NASCAR. Here we have a 20 year old rookie winning the biggest race of the year at his first try. Now NASCAR still has its fair share of "good ol' boys," Mark Martin and Bill Elliott to name two, but if you look at the field at Phoenix there is more younger than 30 than over it I would guess. Brad Keselowski. Joey Logano, Regan Smith, are just three names that come to mind as new boys. These guys not only get into the Sprint Cup they also get good rides and are able to stay there, unlike F1 which seems to suck in new boys with a bag of money and spit them out for the next one.

So why is this? NASCAR has a terrific farm system of short track races all over the US, and then the top tiers of ARCA, Trucks and Nationwide to bring these guys through. Obviously there are many more than those we see make it, but the chance is there, and you do not see the young guys buying their ride, they earn it. This is a very American thing with the NFL, NBA and NHL relying on the colleges as their farm system, and Baseball using the colleges and then their minor leagues to develop talent. F1 relies upon the myriad of open wheel formula to sort out the best, but at what cost to the drivers? At every step the driver has to bring money and it is ridiculous what GP2 costs. Even when they get there a competitive seat is not guaranteed and your time in F1 very short lived if you do not get in to a top team.

So what is MotoGP doing to nurture new talent? Nothing that I can see. Moto2 is expensive for a young rider, and like F1, there is no guarantee you can make the step up. OK, NASCAR is in one country and has control over much of the racing, and MotoGP is international, but through the FIM and the members they have the ability to do something. When I worked for Kenny in Spain we worked with the Spanish Motorcycle Authority, a promoter and the manufacturers to put together a "finishing school" to identify fresh blood, and it did for a while. So it can be done, just needs some foresight and commitment, not just taking from the sport. What is Dorna going to do when Rossi retires?

Nice article on Crash.net about Sir Jackie Stewart's views on the lack of overtaking and Mr. Tilke's tracks.

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/167041/1/stewart_tilke_tracks_to_blame_for_lack_of_passing.html

Joe Saward also has a piece about the Serious Fraud Squad, is there a "not very serious" Fraud Squad? Apparently A1GP is being investigated for losing all that money. It never made sense and the revival as A10GP does not either. There are always people who will look at what Bernie has and think they can do the same.

On a similar note the Two Wheels web site is reporting that the Jerez track is in trouble.

http://www.twowheelsblog.com/post/6050/jerez-de-la-frontera-circuit-may-shut-down-motogp-round-risk?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+twowheelsblog%2Fcom+%28twowheelsblog%29

The model is broken, tracks can no longer make money staging spectator races, even if a huge crowd turns up like they do in Jerez for the MotoGP. Unless a Government is paying do not even start down this road.

At the recent track conference we had a session on how to make your circuit more energy efficient and truly green, and to look out for "greenwash," the BS that some people put out to make themselves look green. We see a lot of this in racing today, it is as if just because we are involved in a sport that runs on gasoline we have to apologize for it. The latest today from Infineon Raceway, Sears Point to me, and NASCAR, is that these heroes have planted 74 trees, a whole 74! Some forest that will be, and think of the carbon offsets, must be at least one lap by one car don't you think? My wife and I donate trees to people on special occasions or in their memory through the Arbor Day Foundation. We have over 700 planted so far, so come on NASCAR and Bruton Smith, get real. And to everyone else, think about donating to the Arbor Day and have a forest of memories growing, it is not expensive and a much better gift. You can actually go and see your trees if you wish.

It seems to be a day for stating the obvious. Graham Rahal wants to be at Ganassi for a long time. Really? What else are you going to say Graham, a couple of races will do me?

Tavo Hellmund says that Tilke knows his stuff. He sent the FIA  "all the civil engineering. It's a big book, a massive document. It's a blueprint for what the track is going to look like with all the cross-grading and everything." Not the cross-grading and everything, wow who would have thought. Tilke does not expect to have a problem with the FIA. I bet he doesn't after some of the stuff he gets away with like Turn 17 and the pit entry at Korea.

There are two related items today about the economics of staging an F1 race. Valencia it seems has had enough of subsidising Bernie with four years left to run on their contract. Bernie of course will not let them out of the contract so they are trying to find someone to take it over, which you would think would be easy with the number of countries who want one. If you cannot make it pay in an Alonso mad country like Spain where can you? It is costing them 30m euros, about $45m, to stage the race, including Bernie's fee, which must be a cut rate, and they are only recouping 10m euros from ticket sales, so they lose about $30m a year. Why could they not work this out before they did the deal?

On a similar note Alain Prost is frustrated that France does not have the political will to "buy" a GP. He knows they will lose 8m euros, even with a reduced fee from Bernie, and no government wants to spend that, on top of building a new track. Austin, are you listening? So if Alain could work it out beforehand why is Valencia surprised?

It seems there might be moves afoot to put Daniel Ricciardo into Buemi's seat at Torro Rosso. Not sure that is a great move for either party, one season in GP2 would probably be better for Daniel than being thrown in the deep end with a mid-field car. I know Vettel made the transition from Torro Rosso, but I would not like to bet my future on that happening again. Look at the Hulkenburg situation for a driver without a big personal sponsor.

Interesting that it has been announced that HKS, an architectural firm, has been added to Tilke for the Austin Track. Whatever you say about Tilke's tracks, his architecture has been good, so why bring in another architect?

So, Korea gets full marks because it was better than everyone feared? Jean Todt said that "It is easy to be very critical in this situation. I think that the essentials are an admiration for all the work which has been done." So full marks for trying. If it had been Silverstone Bernie would be canceling the contract by now. You cannot have traffic jams and muddy parking lots it seems unless you are paying Bernie $40m. My final comment on this mess is that one journo said it was Tilke's best track yet. Now it is time for me to retire.

Red Bull say they are "hopeful" about Vettel's engines lasting for the next two races. Not the way to approach them I would have thought. Do the teams announce which engine they are using and how many kilometers it has done?  That would be good to know, but I doubt they want their opposition to know. Since when do engine manufacturers apologise? It seems Red Bull are not yet ready to let Vettel help Webber, with only two races to go when will they be? Barring an engine failure, always possible, it looks as if Alonso is going to wrap this up.

Elsewhere the V8Supercars put on their usual "crash fest" at Surfers Paradise and it will be interesting to hear what the real attendance figures were. My sources in Oz tell me that there were lots of hotel rooms available up to the last minute. But I'm sure it was a record crowd. There are lies, damn lies, and promoters attendance figures.

I think it is time for me to retire if Korea is an example of what a modern race track needs to be. Mark Webber says "We are really clutching at straws to be able to try and criticise anyone here." Personally I cannot find anything I actually like about the track from either a racing or safety point of view. It is as I have said before, if they think the track owners know nothing but somehow manage to get it finished, and that is relative, and get it half right, then they have done a "remarkable job." If they think you should know better then nothing is good enough. Just when was it OK not to have a verge between the white line and the wall? Some people compared it to Valencia, but it is far worse.

I enjoyed the streaming web based coverage of first practice, no commentary and we could hear the cars. Picture quality was great too. Not that the SPEED boys did a bad job on the second practice, for once it was not all gushing over a new track. I thought their comments were spot on about that last corner complex and pit entry, not sure about pit out either, and all those corners just running together. We saw in practice how impossible it is to overtake through those. And it is bumpy, despite the McLaren engineer's comments yesterday about how smooth it is. I guess if you are walking at 4 mph it looks OK.

The pavement has stayed down so full marks for that. I suspect the dust helped that, and the track surface is so hard, like we had in Adelaide, that the tires are not getting a grip and that is why we are seeing so much graining from tires sliding. When Keke Rosberg won the first race in Adelaide he had to keep stopping for tires as he was spinning the rear tires so much he was ripping them to shreds.

There is so much wrong here I do not even know where to start. It is like when I inspected Mosport after Don Panoz bought it. I believe that this is the worst Tilke design so far. Shouldn't he be getting better? I can only surmise that he was told to build a street circuit to suit the future city. So he designed around obstacles that are not there yet, instead of designing the track on a blank piece of ground, and then telling them to design the city around it. Perhaps he does not like to tell clients when they are wrong, but as a professional that is what we should do. Perhaps that is why he has all these projects and I do not. It is certainly why I do not work for Don any more, he got tired of me telling him what he could not do.

On a different note I read a comment from Ferrari that based on recent races they had done the right thing by backing Alonso over Massa. Sort of a self fulfilling prophesy don't you think?

And what about Lewis? Sits out most of practice and goes out and bangs in fastest lap.