Bob Barnard Track Engineering

There is a saying, "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics!" One of my favorites is "my heads in the oven and my feet are in the fridge, but on average I feel pretty good." If you look at the F1 race fast laps you see that Massa set the fastest lap in the race followed by Alonso. If you did not see the race you would perhaps assume they won, but Massa had a dreadful time and Domenicalli is "dissatisfied and disappointed" at their performance and is heading back to Italy to look for more downforce. Just shows that being fast over one lap does not win races.

Everyone, including Pirelli, are trying to work out how Perez did the race on one stop. Is his driving style that different, smoother than Button's? Perhaps it was the illegal rear wing. It was not as if he was stooging around at the back, his fastest race lap was quicker than Petrov and Hamilton.

The FIA, aka Charlie Whiting, admitted that the DRS system did not really add anything to overtaking, but blamed the short straight and fast corner onto the straight. Now the last corner is the second of a left/right combination that I would not have thought that fast, especially if you compare the situation at Monza. The logic is that in a fast corner the car following cannot get close enough to effect a pass at the end of the straight, but where do we see passing at Monza? At the end of the straight which follows the parabolica, a scary fast corner. Malaysia will tell us, the corner leading on to the main straight is very slow and the straight longer, but then again it might rain.

Dario Franchitti won an accident marred Indycar race at St Petersberg, despite being last in practice the other day. Perhaps being at the back is a good place to be at an Indycar start. I have asked before and will do so again, why take your show to a place that does not show it off to its full potential? Perhaps Indycar fans just want the crashes? After all Paul Tracy still has a drive.

Montoya failed to convert his pole speed into a race win yet again, another example of one lap speed not getting the job done, which I guess we see in NASCAR most of the time. I saw the last few laps while at an Aussie mates place for a barbie, no not a doll, and was probably the best piece of the race to watch.

David Brabham had a difficult first FIA GT Championship baptism, but showed good pace in practice in the Nissan. Personally I can't see a future for this series, especially when you look at the quality of racing in GT2.

So the first day of the 2011 season has come and gone and what did we learn? The usual suspects are at the top of the time sheet, surprisingly perhaps in the shape of McLaren. They obviously did something special in the second practice as they found around two seconds. It is still a lot like testing, we won't really know I fear until the race who has the best race set up. The tires did not seem to give up as quickly as I expected, with drivers setting fast times after three laps on them. There is still an unpredictability about what to expect every time you go out on a new set, and the Stewards authorised the use of additional tires after there were problems with mounting some. Does not sound like good quality control, more like a lottery.

Chandook said he was glad to be back in F1, all 50 seconds of it. That's how far he got in the Lotus, Turn Three to be exact before plonking it against the inside wall courtesy of a heavy right foot, cold tires and damp track. Lotus must have regretted that decision. They are strangely off the pace they showed in testing where it seemed they had dragged themselves to within two or so seconds of the fast guys, but here they are back where they were last season. Gascoyne says there is a lot more left. Let's hope so, they are barely in front of the 107% rule.

Not so lucky are Virgin who are still 6 seconds adrift, only faster than HRT because that mobile, sorry bad choice, embarrasment only managed one lap with one car right at the end of the second practice. They are due an "early bath" as they say in soccer, barring a miracle. Aussies love a battler, but this is way beyond that now.

The good news for McLaren is not so much the pace they are now showing, it is the reliability that was sorely missing in testing. All the top runners looked good in that respect, and Mercedes seem to have resolved their problems. Rosberg looked like setting the morning's fastest time on a couple of laps, only to run wide and lose time, and Michael is sixth fastest on the day. Massa seems to be struggling, and Alonso did not appear until very late in the morning session for some reason, but was right on the pace immediately, impressive. Renault were strangely off the pace they threatened in testing, but new boy Perez  was an impressive eighth, a second faster than his more experienced team mate.

Adrian Newey says he is confident that they are still up to half a second faster than the pack, and if anyone knows he does. Still tires are going to play a part. Vettel had a large chunk out of a front tire that Red Bull say was due to running over debris on the track. Let's hope so. Domenicali from Ferrari is concerned about the amount of traffic in pit lane if each team is making three stops, and the new pit entry is really tight to accommodate the V8Supercar garage brought over from Homebush. I guess Tony Cochrane did not want his series to look like second class citizens.

It was interesting watching the movable wing in operation during practice, but the FIA are still playing with the rules so it is hard to keep up. The overtaking zone in Melbourne will now start BEFORE the last corner, not sure how that helps, you need the downforce to get through the corner I would have thought, and as soon as you bolt on intermediates you can no longer use the wing. They tried a race simulation during the last half hour of second practice just to totally confuse the crowd. And there are suggestions Red Bull did not use it in practice, so who knows where the times are.

The WSBK is at Donnington Park this weekend and Carlos Checa continued where he left off at Phillip Island topping the first free practice.

Le Mans Series cars tested at Paul Ricard yesterday, with the Aston Martin still to turn a wheel. The first race is next weekend. I did see a piece about the FIA talking to Peugeot about another flip by their new car. It has  had more than few big accidents during testing, although it ran faultlessly at Sebring, and the FIA are concerned about the aero on the car.

I am a little concerned about a report from the Portugese Rally special stage where a wheel came off a car and struck a spectator, and all the driver was reported to say afterward was "I can't believe I have been that stupid." To have crashed I suppose, but I would have thought he might have asked about the condition of the spectator and expressed some regret, or is rallying a sport where the spectator takes their chances?

Well I joined Chairman Atherton's brave new world yesterday and watched the 12 hour on espn3.com. I have to admit to being a sceptic and was actually pleasantly surprised. After connecting my lap top to the TV via an HDMI cable which I already had, and some teething problems, it ran faultlessly all day. Could not use the lap top for anything else, but hey, I was watching the race. Not sure why some folks cannot get espn3.com? This is the first time I've been on it and it won't be the last. When I first connected my soccer team was being shown live.

The Radio Le Mans commentary added to the enjoyment, I turn the sound off on Speed and listen to these guys anyway so I was pleasantly surprised by it. The only jarring note were the required female and American in pit lane for the ABC highlights show presumably. When will they learn to keep their mouth shut unless there is something worth saying, and no we do not need to be told that the fuel goes in first at every stop. I particularly liked being told that the windscreens had to be cleaned because of the "daylight sunshine." That nightime sunshine can be deadly to. Mind you John Hindhaugh, the main man at Radio Le Mans has his Murray Walker moments. After a couple of hours of great racing John admitted he "could watch this all day." Well John it's a 12 hour race so your in luck. But I knew what he meant and love his passion and knowledge as we loved Murray's. Motor Sport had a great interview with Murray this month in which Murray said that commentators could not fake excitement or enthusiasm. Take note Lee Diffey, and no one could accuse Bob Varsha of faking either, Mr. Bland. I was amused by the number of comments on how hot it was. I guess if you come from the north of England it is, in which case do not come back in a couple of months time John.

To me it was more enjoyable watching this broadcast than Speed. Much less interruption for commercials, although the two we had got old very quickly. There were the inevitable "infomercials", but again these seemed less intrusive, perhaps because we were seeing so much of the race. Why oh Why does Atherton feel he has to talk to the commentators at every race, and who cares? Is it an insecurity complex? As I said before, Bernie never feels the need, nor Brian France. There were too many extended in-car camera shots, as good as they were, and static camera shots like the camera crew were on break, but this is nit-picking.

The race was a cracker, with three cars capable of winning down to the wire. Great to see Hughes de Chaunac's Oreca Team win it, and the tears in Hughes eyes are a testament to his passion for the sport despite the many years and great success he has had. Not to mention the incredible job done by Highcroft to finish second and nearly steal the race, in a petrol Honda that only turned a wheel a week ago. Well done Duncan, Brabs and the rest of the team, and on to Le Mans. Peugeot finished third in their new car, but both Peugeot and Audi ran into problems and each other, but let's not take anything away from Oreca and Highcroft, they were on the pace and not just lucky. Hard to see what the ALMS is going to do for LMP1 cars though, and the LMP2 were disappointing to say the least.

Not so the GT's who put on their usual performance with 5 or 6 cars running together most of the race. Well done Bobby Rahal and BMW, but we can expect the new Ferrari's to come back strong. Corvette avoided the debacles of last year to finish strong, so we are in for a stellar year, again. It is hard to accept, as the pit lane reporters seemed to do, that overseas professional teams did not know the rule book because it was their first time here. I'm sure Tony Dowe would not be making these mistakes wherever he went.

Corvette showed their in-car video display from the rear facing cameras which lead me to the question, why not build them into the wing mirrors?

The track played its part in the proceedings as is normal for Sebring. At what point do the bumps, that is a mild term to describe them, stop being "character" and become dangerous? We saw cars being destroyed thanks to Turn Seventeen particularly, and we were fortunate we did not see serious injury to Johannes van Overbook  when his Jaguar was tipped into the fence through no fault of his own. It is time Don dipped into his wallet and spent some money to maintain this place.

So, is the "game changer" a success? Well for me as an enthusiast and a professional involved in the sport it was actually an improvement, but how many average fans are going to go to the trouble to do this? OK, the next generation are being brought up on live streaming on handhelds, but are they interested in motorsport anyway? The evidence says not. Is a two hour highlights show on ABC today going to bring new viewers? Perhaps, the average sports fan is brought up on a diet of two or three hour games, so watching twelve hours is unlikely. The viewing figures will tell the story, but again, will the average fan think our sport unimportant if not worthy of live TV?

Elsewhere the MotoGP season is underway in Qatar in what should be a good race, at least for third as Julian Ryder said. C'mon Aussie! Bernie is up to his games again saying this could be the last F1 GP in Australia this week, he has to drop two races anyway to make way for Austin and Russia, so it may as well be Oz. Nice negotiating position. Vettel is making noises that if the drivers are not happy with the rules this year they may withdraw their labor. He needs to talk to the drivers who tried that on in South Africa a couple of decades ago. Bernie's position on drivers is like buses, there will be another one along soon.

Amazingly most of the motorsport web sites have nothing new to say this morning, so little, or "petit" to stir my comments. There does seem to be a lot of interest though in the number of cars likely to enter this year's Petit Le Mans, and the tracks' ability to handle them. Check out Murphy The Bear's very latest offering:

http://murphythebear.com/blog/index.php/2011/02/26/185-le-grand-petit-how-many-at-road-atlanta/#more-1019

When I was there running Road Atlanta for the first one we were just happy to have entries without worrying about if we had too many. I recall one SCCA event that was delayed in starting and they threw out most of the entries in one session of practice, over eighty cars from memory. Bit of a nightmare and would not want to do that again, but amateur drivers going in all directions. No red flags though.

No such problems for motorcycle racing these days, lucky to have a field. Down at the Island Carlos Checa preserved his pole position for the Superbike Round by winning the "superpole" shootout by a slim margin over his arch geriatric rival Max Biaggi. So the race is anybodies it seems, should be worth a look.

See you all tomorrow.

Very quiet Saturday, but a friend sent me some interesting news items on the French track Mas Du Clos which appears to have been closed by the French Authorities because it does not meet the FIM standard. Now the track was primarily a "track day" circuit, and as such does not need an FIM license, not sure it even needs a French Motorcycle sanction. This opens a whole bunch of questions about who should be approving tracks, one that will be addressed at the upcoming Los Angeles Professional Circuit Owners Forum. In NSW, Australia, the police approve tracks under The Speedway Act, but it is the local guy who does it without knowledge or guidelines, so what is the point? I guess he then becomes liable, but somehow I doubt it.

Someone needs to inspect and approve tracks, so who should it be and to what standard? Insurance companies have the most to lose, but their role and ability varies all over the world I suspect. If the National sanctioning body is not insuring the track or events as they have no role in track days or private tests for instance, then should they still have the role, and would they want it? If the National body is not involved then the FIA or FIM have no reason to become involved. So are the State Authorities the ones? Not unless they know what they are looking at. There are specialists like myself who can inspect and certify which happens here in the US for the SCCA, but there are 1300 tracks here and I bet 1200 have never been properly inspected.

This is a huge can of worms, because if a track gets inspected and does not do the work then they are in a worse situation than not being inspected, so most owners probably do not want to know. In the meantime people are getting hurt or worse due to lack of proper safety measures being in place. Perhaps France is making the correct moves?

I'd be really interested in hearing from readers who know the situation with Mas Du Clos, or want to comment on what happens where they live.