Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Aus$50m, that is what the Victorian Government has owned up to losing on this year's Melbourne F1 GP, despite a good crowd. Of course promoters attendance figures are always dubious at the best of times, but what must the total cost of staging that race be if they LOST $50m? Are you listening Tavo? Now there is a business plan I'd love to read. When I was involved with Adelaide it cost around $20m to stage, including Bernie's fee, which was a lot less in those days. Now that was 25 years ago, but even so, when you have a permanent pit building, the roads are all there, how does it cost that much to put up grandstands? It cannot all be promotion and staff. Allowing for income of say $20m from spectators, corporate etc, that puts the cost of Bernie's fee and staging at $70m!

After "letting the team down" in Monza, Lewis vows to try even harder for the rest of the season. Given how he has been racing that is going to be something to see.

Not much else of real interest going on. Rumors of Kimi to Renault continue, Grosjean is the new Pirelli tester, and Mark Webber is not asking Vettel for help winning the championship. Perhaps if Mark wins the Championship the loss in Melbourne may only be $45m?

Continuing refining the Sol Real layout with the development of the long section, the elevation of the track. The land is basically flat, so looking to move dirt around to make some more interesting corners. Most of the tracks around here are dead flat, so we need to have some elevation to make it different. Not that it is not already different in having safe run off, something sadly lacking at most tracks.  Started signing up potential members, and looking to do a session in Tucson soon with the local enthusiasts as the track is halfway between there and Phoenix.

So Nick Heidfeld has gone from reserve driver at Mercedes, to Pirelli tire tester, and now Sauber driver. Is Peter getting a jump on the opposition with the experience Nick has with the tires? I thought the point of using Nick was he was not driving for any of the teams? Pedro de la Rosa has done a decent job, if a bit up and down, but for a guy who was test driver for McLaren for many years he did better than Luca Badoer. Must have been a shock for Pedro, but it is a smart move by Peter Sauber. Will make Singapore even more interesting.

Martin Whitmarsh says we should all be very happy with the racing this season, and he is actually right. No team has dominated, even though Red Bull probably would have if they did not shoot themselves in the foot so often. They have more issues with brakes than all the rest put together, why is that? It has been interesting how car and driver combination have suited different tracks, and the technical side has been up to par. The remaining tracks are all different. A street track with little passing, Suzuka, one of the great tracks, Korea and unknown but looks like a street circuit which might break up, Brazil, always a good race, and the Abu Dhabi. Martin says it will be great to have a finale there with the championship on the line, but at a track where there was no passing and very little action I'm not so sure.

So Kimi is looking to come back to F1 with Renault. I'm not surprised. He might enjoy rallying, but has crashed so many times you must wonder if he has a future. It would be good to have him back. I know I say we need to make room for young guys, but Kimi will add to the show and make the driver line up even stronger.

A friend sent me a piece from the Isle of Man local Radio which is questioning the future of road racing, on real roads, as they do on the Isle and in Ireland and parts of England. They lost another rider last weekend in Ireland. It takes enormous courage to race a motorcycle around these roads, but common sense says it is not the smartest or safest thing to do. It mentioned insurance. How do you insure something like that? Sure, the riders all sign a waiver, but the insurer must know that sooner or later a spectator is going to be seriously hurt or worse. The question is, if you want to keep doing this how do you make it safer, and if it is do these guys still want to do it?

Sitting at home yesterday watching the first Sunday of football, American style. The night game was the Cowboys and Redskins, and towards the end there were two incidents where players went down with potential neck injuries. It struck me the difference in approach to the Misano accident at MotoGP. Play stopped, medical staff ran out, the first guy there knelt at the players head and held it in position so as not to endanger a spinal injury. Everyone took their time. There seemed to be no pressure to restart the game despite what must be a similar situation to the MotoGP telecast, if not more due to the network's schedule. The player is given the opportunity to walk off, no one rushes out with a stretcher and throws him on it just to clear the pitch. When footballers can run 40 yds in just over 4 seconds, or less than 20 mph, and bikes are running at over 100 mph, it makes you think. The NFL has learned the hard way about head and spine injuries, and sometimes I wonder if motorcycle racing has learned anything.

Hero to zero? Hamilton is now the one being questioned by journalists over his rashness after his dive down the inside of Massa resulted in broken steering. It is called racing guys, and Martin Whitmarsh rightly has told Lewis not to change. I do not put it in the Vettel at Spa class, even if it was very optimistic. When he pulls these passes off we all applaud his skill and bravery, he seems to be able to create passing maneuvers where others cannot or will not.

The rumors about Lotus switching to Renault power next year seem to have come true with the announcement that they are ending their contract with Cosworth. Interesting decision given that the Williams is doing very nicely thank you with the Cosworth.

Monza is an anachronism of a race track. Great history and atmosphere, but a bit like the old Hockenheim and Silverstone, long straights interrupted  by a couple of corners, and then we throw in  a couple of chicanes to slow the cars down, but only a little. We all know, except Bob Varsha, despite the fact he had just told us, that it is in a Royal Park and very limited in what it can do, much like Brands Hatch. So why does Bob wonder why "they have not done more with the infield of the old oval?"

What surprises me is the lack of serious accidents. We saw yesterday how Massa narrowly avoided hitting the wall at the Parabolica, and with the extreme speeds and lack of run off I would expect many more incidents. Now I would suspect that that would mean that the drivers are not at ten tenths, leaving a bit on the table, but when you watch that is very hard to believe.

Interesting technical session, especially between the McLarens, and Lewis may yet have made the right decision. OK, he will lose a bit of time in the corners, but you are not going to overtake there anyway. It is at the end of the fast straights where the overtaking will happen, especially Turn 1, and if Lewis can get through the Parabolica OK then he should be in a good place to go by. I mentioned yesterday how fast he was back on the gas at the entry to the Parabolica, and watching today it was noticeable how the quick cars only went back to fifth and were immediately on the gas, whereas the slower cars were going down a lot of gears.

Interesting the Red Bull pair were not in the hunt for the pole. Mark continued to have bad luck in practice, and the commentators questioned the decision not to put a fresh engine in his car for the race. Is Red Bull still playing games? Vettel was never a factor, despite being quick yesterday. Mercedes struggling badly, but Williams continue their good form, and Kubica does wonders with the Renault.

So Rome has done a deal for an F1 GP starting in 2012 or 13. Bulgaria again gets a mention. Where is this going to end? Who are we going to lose? There are a few I could suggest, but I doubt Bernie is going to give up the income from them.

Talking of failed stupid GP bids we had the Donnington Park saga which never made any sense except as a whipping post for Silverstone. So Simon Gillette tears the place up and then goes bankrupt. Along comes Adroit, an engineering company to take over the promotion and fix the mess. Now I am a Civil Engineer who made the transition to Promoter, so gave them the benefit of the doubt, but again I had my doubts to give them the benefit of. Lo and behold after fixing the track they gave the place back to the Wheatcroft's. Robert Fearnall, the tracks long time promoter, said "Adroit is a construction company that realised running a race circuit was outside it's experience." Perhaps they could have realized that before they took it on? This sport is full of people who know nothing about it but think it is glamorous and that they can be successful where others fail.  It would be interesting to know who paid for fixing the track, or was it a freebie from Adroit?

I know I wrote off Allan McNish yesterday after practice, and now he is on pole, but I do not think it is quite that straightforward. It sounds as if the Audi squad got the strategy correct and Peugeot did not, but Davidson is still not worried about the race, and nor would I be. But I have underestimated both Allan and Audi before though.

The Race Director, Paul Butler, who I know and respect, but have not seen him in that role personally, and the Medical Chief have both defended their decisions not to red flag the race yesterday. I know from personal experience the pressures in Race Control during an event, split second decisions that have to be lived with later. I accept that they acted in what they saw as the best interests of all the riders, just disagree that they were the right ones. The doctor said that it was safer to get Tomizawa off the track so the medics could work without bikes going by, well if you red flagged it then that would have been the case. Paul said that he kept the race going as the track was cleared quickly. I think that is the point that most of us watching were appalled about, they literally dragged those poor guys off the track, dropping Tomizawa in their haste. I know that if you asked the other riders and the spectators at home and at the track, they would rather have the delay than watch that again.

We now learn that Tomizawa had a cardiac arrest out on the track, hardly the story that was being given out to the commentators and the teams. This is where you get the feeling that "the show must go on." Not sure I would have cancelled the MotoGP race, but I might have stopped the Moto2 right there.

It's nice to read that the makers of helmets and other rider protection continue to work on improvements to prevent this type of injury. The accident itself is almost certainly unavoidable, a rider can lose the front end, or the rear as in this case, and in a pack is impossible to miss for the guys behind. Helmets are amazing already, look at Massa's survival last year, and the leathers and body armor get better all the time. I hope that something can be found to protect riders in this situation, but it is hard to see how that is possible without making them heavier or bulkier, so more dangerous than the problem we have now.

I'm not sure what Tilke is saying when he says that his track designs "will be more on the 'edge' in the future in a bid to help promote better racing and more excitement." To me it sounds as if he is going to make them less safe, but that cannot be, surely? After designing all the GP tracks for the last decade how is it he says he now knows how to make them more exciting? He defends his designs by saying he has to work to factors such as land availability, local geography and the budget that track owners are willing to put forward. Well duh! Those are the factors every designer, architect or engineer faces every day. I've never noticed the budget being a restraint for Herman, and the land and topography neither. He says that the extent of run off is dictated by the FIA, and he is correct that it moves the spectator away from the action, but I think the criticisms are about the lack of action, not that it is too far away. Apparently Bernie is giving him more rein to make the tracks interesting , and giving him some good ideas. I'm sure we all look forward to seeing them.