Bob Barnard Track Engineering

To follow up my piece on why we do not see great races and series from around the world I have asked a series of friends questions on the reasons and costs. Chet Burks who's company produces many motorsport race coverages told me the obvious, that the audience is not big enough for the big channels. But here we are, Sunday afternoon prime time and we have two hours of World Superbike on. Now Gill Cambell from Laguna told me the other week she thought there were no more than 65,000 fans for MotoGP in the US, so one would suspect a similar number for Superbike. Don't tell me there are not more than that for races like the Spa 6 hour that ran yesterday. I would suspect that the F1 audience would crossover to endurance given the similar high tech of the cars. So how is Superbike on TV? Someone like Honda or Yamaha must be paying for it I suspect. Pity Peugeot do not sell cars here, and Audi do not seem too bothered it is not shown.

Just for fun I logged on to MotorsTV, an English channel which does show all those great series we do not see. It goes to most of Europe, and I know there all sorts of rights issues, but surely someone can do something similar here, or just buy the MotorsTV feed? But I am just a simple track builder, what would I know?

Good racing from Turkey. Lots of overtaking, not quite sure if that is what I want to see the way it is happening, but you have to be impressed by how clean the boys kept it. A few biffs and barges, but basically everyone making room. Lee Diffey carrying on about a record number of pit stops. Personally I do not tune in to watch pit stops, it is about racing not stopping and parking. Sorry to harp on it but if overtaking and pit stops are the measure of great racing watch an endurance race! Not sure how many passes there are a lap, and yes there are cars of different performance out there, but each pass has to be judged just right. Back to F1, it is good to see Ferrari and Mercedes so competitive, makes for more interesting races. Also interesting to see Bridgestone advertising during the race. They worked out you do not need to supply the tires to get coverage, especially when the tires of your competitor are wearing out so fast. Ambush marketing anybody?

Speaking of Superbike, good racing from Monza. As with Turkey you get good racing on fast tracks.

I was resigned to listening to the Spa 6 hour race this morning on Radio Le Mans, but thanks to Greg Sarni and his buddy I was told where to find a live stream of the race. It was on a web site I had not heard of, no surprise there, and I think it was a German TV feed, so listened to John Hindhaugh and his mates anyway. It is an amazing lack of vision on the part of TV stations in the US that races such as Spa, with the best cars in the world competing, on I think the best track, are not given any coverage whatsoever. We all know SPEED has gone the way of pandering to the lowest common denominator, i.e. NASCAR fan, but what about espn3.com who are streaming the ALMS series, and just about any sporting event on earth? Versus thinks it is a sports channel, and is there no one out there who can go back to where SPEED started and launch a channel for race fans? I know someone will say there is not an audience for it, but how did the original SPEED gather enough audience to make Fox want to buy it?

It makes no sense to me for the whole endurance race series not to be shown. It would be like showing one F1 race a season. Or one football match. How are you going to build or keep a fan base if you are not showing the whole series? Is SPEED covering Le Mans this year does anyone know?

More to the point this situation shows a complete lack of vision by the ALMS management. If your two key races that you promote, Sebring and Petit, are rounds of the Intercontinental Cup, the unofficial world sportscar championship, why on earth would you not do a deal for coverage of the other races in that series? You wonder why sports car racing is dying in the US. If the FI Teams think the series owner needs to do more to promote it, come and look at what is not happening here!

Peugeot won the Spa race by the way, a reverse of last year at Le Mans where they were fast and fragile, and Audi not quite as fast but luckier and reliable. Good race right through all the classes and down to the wire in most. Ferrari won the GT battle but BMW kept them honest, with Porsche in trouble. The winning Peugeot also won the "green challenge." And why not? As I have been saying, there is no need for another trophy, racing is about maximizing efficiency, so the winning car should by definition be the most efficient, especially if it is a diesel. Let's stop this pandering to the greenies and PC, or should I say BS.

Biaggi wrapped up pole at Monza with Checa still way off the pace. Troy Corser found some pace, or enthusiasm, to put himself on the front row, so tomorrow should be interesting.

Turkey threw up few surprises. I was not surprised the Red Bulls did not go out again in the final Q3 session. It was worth the very small risk one or two guys were going to pip them for the front row to have an extra set of tires. Not sure that this is F1, but it is today's reality. Rosberg followed up his China performance with third on the grid and the Mercedes crew are getting on top of the car set up. Williams lifted their game, but not soon enough to save Sam Michael and co, but Sam says he already has something lined up. Virgin's supposed corner turning upgrade left Glock behind the HRT! Nice going Nick. Lotus are clawing their way closer to getting out of Q1, and it will be fun to watch Kobayashi doing a "Webber" from the back tomorrow. He is a demon overtaker anyway, so watch your mirrors boys.

Three series enjoying Friday practice with interesting results. In Turkey the weather spoiled the morning, especially for Vettel who stuck it into the wall in a big way and could not take part in the afternoon session. Neither McLarens bothered in the morning, they must expect a dry race, or perhaps they are expecting a wet one and wanted to save their wet tires as Pirelli are concerned that not enough sets of wets have been provided for a complete wet weekend. Button finally topped the times with the McLarens and Mercedes swapping fast times, yes even Michael. Webber apparently did not try for a fast time so the Red Bulls were for once missing in action. Alonso is down in 11th, with both Massa and Petrov faster than their team leaders. Lotus were split either side of the Sauber of Kobayashi, while the corner Virgin turned must have been a wrong turn as they had trouble beating the HRT's.

Meanwhile at Spa it was dry, fancy that, and the Audis continued to set the pace, and the closest petrol car still nearly 5 secs off their fast time. Some big accidents seen here so far, with Peugeot doing an overnight rebuild and the RML car being withdrawn. In the GT class Porsche managed to get one car amongst the Ferraris, but your money must be on the new 458 in this class. Still in 1000km around here anything can happen, even rain!

The Superbikes are at Monza and Checa is in an uncustomary mid field position. Leon Haslam leads the way on the BMW from Mad Max Biaggi. Let's see what Saturday brings for all these series.

Elsewhere the Authorities have frozen Mr. Gribkowsky's money so it looks like he is going to trial. Should make interesting theater. Bernie is going to have fights on two fronts it seems. There are now reports that News Corp is also going to be at the Stuttgart meeting. It appears that this meeting surprised the other teams and is making them "nervous." And we thought politics was dead in F1.

The FIM "clarified" the claiming rules teams,CRT's, at Estoril. How many of the 16 new MotoGP teams for 2012 will be CRT's I do not know. CRT's are defined as anyone the GP Commission decides, and not one of the Motorcycle Manufacturers Association. They must be "prototypes," so presumably built from scratch, not a rehash of an existing machine. Teams only get CRT status one year at a time, and that status can be removed during the season with one race notice by the GP Commission! How do you put a team together and sponsors on that basis? Why would the GP Commission withdraw the status? Because they are winning? And then what, they become part of the Manufacturers race? We are going to have two class racing in MotoGP it seems. Someone out there must know a potential CRT team and can comment on this.

The other main news story is about News Corp and Exor, the Italian group that basically owns most things Berlesconi doesn't, including Ferrari, so a lot of what was being scoffed at as just ill informed gossip is actually true. CVC has confirmed that James Murdoch has talked to them about their "friendly" intentions. Now there are all sorts of scenarios being put forward for the motives of all these players, so you can take your pick, but those of us who have seen Rupert go from an obscure afternoon paper in Adelaide to a major media player know not to underestimate him.  The choice of words in the News/Exor release is interesting and revealing. They are "creating a consortium with a view to formulating a long-term plan for the development of Formula 1 in the interests of the participants and the fans." Suggests that they are looking to do things differently, and as one scribe said, these words are very similar to when FOTA was looking to form a breakaway series. As I said, is this a backdoor way of doing that?

Interesting weekend coming up with F1 in Turkey, for the last time? Then there is the next round of the Intercontinental Cup at Spa which will see the big boys in sportscars back out for a final warm up for Le Mans, all except Aston Martin. WSBK is at Monza, so plenty going on for everyone. Wonder if the Kawasaki team will get there?

In other news the Indycar teams want to delay the introduction of the different aero kits that were to be possible for the new Dallara chassis. Seems the teams do not want to spend the money it will take to R&D and produce these just so the cars can look different. Why not let them be different? No self respecting top class series can be spec racing. Even Grand-Am has more than one DP chassis, just.

So the FIA made a firm decision not to decide on Bahrain. Let's give them another month. What a bunch of champions. Don't wait for Bernie to tell you what is going on, or the rulers, send someone down there to see for yourselves! Better still, ask the media people who are there already. This is not difficult. It should have been dropped a long time ago. Who says there are no politics in sport, anyone who has dealt with a National or International Sporting body knows it is nothing but politics. These guys are elected like normal politicians, and make the same deals to get there. For a while there when Bernie really did run things decisions were made and we got on with it. What happened to Jean Todt, did he forget how to do it?

The story about the Kawasaki Team trailer with the load of drugs, and a gun and ammunition, even worse than drugs in England I would have thought, is an odd one. The team are now saying they knew nothing about any of it, someone snuck into the trailer in Assen and left them there. On the table reportedly, and no one noticed. What was the person who left them thinking? No one will notice, I'll just slip over to England and into the team workshop and pick them up when no one is looking? Big problems for all teams from now on one would think. Can you imagine unpacking one of these at Dover? When I was twelve my family came back from a trip to Europe in a Hillman Minx and I saw what the customs did to that.

There is a mess at Williams. This should not happen to Sir Frank, but the SS Williams looks like the Titanic at the moment. Patrick Head is abandoning ship with his bag of loot from the sale of his shares, which are sinking faster than the teams results. The Captain, Parr, has offered to go down with it, but the owners want him around, so it is Sam Michael and Jon Tomlinson who are to be thrown overboard to appease the ocean gods. Enter the evil villain Mike Coughlin to the rescue. Just kidding, I always thought Mike naive and stupid, and a scapegoat for the "spygate" scandal at McLaren, so he has done his time and is getting another turn in the engine room. Let's hope he can get up enough steam to save her. Sorry about getting carried away with the ship analogy.

Meanwhile, over at superliner Ferrari. Upgrades for Turkey have been tested in a straight line at Vairano, but not until after another of those "filming sessions" that Ferrari seem to be famous for. Amazing how these Italian teams can get away with testing on two and four wheels.