Bob Barnard Track Engineering

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. 

And there is still not much going on. Sounds like a fun FR3.5 race at the Nurburgring with Canadian Wilkins just beating Australian Ricciardo, with American Alexander Rossi going out on lap one on a damp track after qualifying on the front row. The usual suspects you might say.

British F3 at Brands Hatch looks set to be just as fraught with the top ten all within half a second between Svendsen-Cook and Magnussen. Spengler continued his domination of qualifying in the DTM for this weekends race at the Lausitz circuit.

Over in Spain the WSBK are at Aragon with Melandri on pole for a change, and Biaggi and Camier on their Aprilia's in front of Checa, I wonder if they can keep it up in the race?

With that, see you tomorrow.

At last the Bahrain Government has seen sense, or at least the writing on the wall, and voluntarily withdrawn for this year. That was the sensible thing to do all along and hope that by 2012 they will have come to some reasonable agreement with the opposition. They are on the 2012 calendar as the first race, but realistically that should be a provisional like Turkey depending on things getting sorted out there. Nice that Jean Todt is now throwing Bernie under the bus, "the commercial rights owner should have sorted this out." Gutless the lot of them. Interesting that Martin Whitmarsh says there's a lot of things he would like to say once the politics have settled down, Can't wait for that. There is certainly enough blame to go around in this farce. India must be wondering what it got itself in to.

Talking of 2012, Bernie is supposedly waiting for an election in Turkey to renegotiate the deal. One suggestion is Bernie gets the admission money as well! Where is this nonsense going to end?

Over in Montreal, where various Government agencies chipped in to pay Bernie's fee, our world champ added another name to the "Champions Wall" in first practice. Still he did that in Turkey and it did not slow him down one bit and is doing well in the second session so far. Rosberg is not slowing down either being fastest in this morning's session by over half a second from Alonso and then his team mate Schumacher. Early days, but this could be interesting. I started to watch the live streaming on SPEED.com, but work got in the way so I saw very little of it, and I'm probably not going to see much of this afternoons session. Still, got to keep my strength up and eyes rested for the 24 hours!

In England it is raining, shocking I know, but it is not raining on Casey Stoner's parade. He is well clear of Simoncelli with Nicky Hayden  and Cal Crutchlow both doing well. It looks like a lot of the guys played it safe, otherwise they are in trouble if the race is wet. The way Stoner and the Honda are going they are in trouble whatever the weather.

Day off in Le Mans, WSBK at Misano with Checa in his usual spot on the time sheet. Looks like all three championships will be decided early at this rate.

Monaco continued to give us some major crashes, and thanks to the design of the modern F1 car they all walked away, figuratively. A couple of things stood out in the race for me. "Controlled aggression" is what they say you need around here, but Lewis forgot about the controlled bit. I don't know if it was the mistake by his engineers in not sending him out early in the Q3 session started this, but I am beginning to wonder where his head is at. You know I am a fan and said after Turkey that Whitmarsh should not be asking him to avoid aggressive moves, but maybe he is seeing something we are not, until today. OK, that aggression got him past Michael, just, but his moves on Masssa and Maldanado where not smart. We saw it on the first lap in Monza last year, and just maybe we have gone over that fine line between great passing moves and stupid ones. I cannot help asking where he would have finished if he had just driven a calm race, probably fourth or fifth. His comment about being called in front of the Stewards 5 times in 6 races "may be because he is black" is a very unfortunate statement by someone not in control. Let's hope an apology is forthcoming.

The other thing I cannot understand is why under a red flag teams are allowed to work on the cars and change tires? Number one this robbed us of a great finish and penalized Alonso and Button. I know it is the rule, I am just at a loss at what that is trying to achieve? It was obvious that no one was going to pass once they all had new tires, the only thing the restart accomplished is Maldanado's car being damaged in a crash.  Vettel has to be congratulated on being able to get that many laps out of the soft tire, I for one could not believe he was not stopping again. The track helped of course, but the still had to drive faultlessly. Mark Webber's luck did not get any better with a delayed pit stop.

Aussie Daniel Ricciardo did his resume no harm by winning the FR 3.5 race, while Alexander Rossi seems to have had a good race before tangling with a back marker.

Kimi finished 27th in his Nationwide debut, and did not enjoy it much by the sound of it, complaining about how hot the cars are. The race was on the same time as the soccer, so missed it, but the commentators agreed he drove well, losing time with a pit exit speeding penalty and split splitter, if that does not sound too odd.

Checa is hot at a freezing Miller Park in the WSBK qualifying, nearly a second if front of second placed man Camier, and over a second on Biaggi.

Now I am going to crave your indulgence and talk about soccer and Barcelona. The Champions League Final was a great match, played in good spirit, but Barcelona were just too good for Man U, in fact too good for anyone. Watching the game it struck me that Barca play the game like a bull fight. Barnard's lost it I hear you say, but bear with me. If you have not seen a bullfight it is a mind game between the matador and the bull. The bull charges into the ring, going for anything and everything, much like Man U started. But as with the bull, that aggression is absorbed and gradually abates as Barca exert a little pressure back, controlling the ball and taunting the other team as happens in the ring with the bull. Eventually the matador uses his cape to mesmerize the bull, just as Barca's short passing game and ball control does to the opposition. At times Man U's defence were static, just watching until the "sword" was applied, the rapier pass through the gap to a player open in front of goal. So 3-1 is the result, and some team has to figure out how to match them at this game. Barca controlled the ball for 70% of the time, and this against one of the other great teams in the world!

If I may continue, I could watch Messi play all day, every day. Not only is he the best player in the world today, perhaps of all time, or will be, but his enjoyment at playing is evident whatever is happening to him. Lewis could learn something here. It does not matter if he has just missed a goal or been taken down by a cynical foul, he gets up smiling. Nothing fazes him. His mind must be amazing. I know mine is more like Lewis'.

It's Memorial Day here in the US this weekend, the traditional start of summer, and a big weekend in motorsport. Not that you would know it for the lack of news. Bahrain continues to provoke strong feelings, even if the paddock is quiet about it other than Bernie. If you have any doubts about why F1 should not go there read today's Pit Pass offering:

http://www.pitpass.com/43742-A-plea-from-Bahrain

As I said the other day, things can be "normal" if all the dissidents are locked up and the press suppressed.

The Kimi/Bush partnership seems to be short lived with Kimi already bored with truck racing and looking to move up, while Kyle is a bit stretched to do this. Kimi practiced the Nemechek car and ran  16th and 18th, not too shabby. Looks like he runs better in this than the truck. The race is Saturday evening here and I wonder if it is live in England like the truck race?

A busy weekend with F1 at Monaco, NASCAR at Charlotte, Indy 500, WSBK at Miller and Grand-Am at Lime rock Monday, and oh yes, Champions League final Saturday morning. Not sure when to sleep or eat. Did I miss anything?

The Lotus judgement has been handed down, and good luck working out what happens now. Both can use Lotus, Lotus Cars can use it on its own, with black and gold livery, and Tony Fernandes can use Team Lotus in green and gold. By now I think we can all work out who is Renault and who is Team Lotus, so who cares? Of course there will be appeals.

The British Touring Car Championship has reportedly seen a huge increase in viewing figures for the first couple of races. "Unprecedented" is the word used. It seems I am wrong, someone does like spec racing. I don't think anyone knows why yet, it will be interesting to find out.