Bob Barnard Track Engineering

So the first F1 race of 2015 has been run and won. Lots of complaints about how few cars actually started, and it was a bit strange being the second year of this formula. No surprise Manor did not make it, that is all very strange. Basically running last years car with a 2015 nose and you could not get the software to work? Did they forget the password? Running last year's Ferrari engine so why would you not run last year's software?

I must confess to be surprised by the struggles of Honda. They sat out last year to develop the engine, so had the same lead time as the Mercedes, Renault and Ferrari. Last year we saw some problems in testing, especially Renault, but even they had a competitive car in the first race. Given Honda is probably the best engine company out there being the new guys does not seem much of an excuse.

Personally I enjoyed the race. I will confess to being a Hamilton fan and a purist who has followed F1 for the best part of 60 years and lover of the technology. So seeing Mercedes enjoy the fruits of their great engineering is how it should be. Are we surprised? Every time Mercedes has been in F1 it has dominated. So now Red Bull once more wants to take their bat and ball home because they can't win. Domination is bad for the sport. It wasn't when Vettel was winning 11 straight, or the team dominated for four years? Only Montezemolo threatened to leave and who took him seriously. Red Bull was always going to go away sooner or later to sponsor some other form of X Games for their audience of gullible kids. I have to admire their marketing prowess, as that is what drives all this. They want a "show" to sell more drinks. Ask Frank Williams why he has run a team, even after he is confined to a wheelchair. It is because he loves the sport. He has never threatened to quit even with all their lean years.

So we need to rein in Mercedes, equalize the engines. We just had that with the last years of the V8s and what happened? Red Bull dominated. They demonstrated that good engineering and preparation will always produce someone who dominates. Have we forgotten the Schumacher years?

Audi dominated Le Mans for years. What happened? Toyota, Peugeot and now Porsche took them on and are using technology that still makes F1 look a bit old hat. F1 had to change or lose its place as the top race series.

Loeb won how many WRC titles? It is in the nature of racing that a team and driver hits on a winning combination and it takes time for others to catch up. So be it, that's racing as they say.

So let's look across the pond to NASCAR, basically a spec series these days. Control ECU from McLaren, control tires from Goodyear, templates equalized in wind tunnel body testing, and close limits on just about everything else. Makes for close racing, but we still see domination by one driver/crew chief. Harvick is on a roll from the end of last season, winning the title, and winning two of the four races this year and second in the others. We saw Jimmy Johnson with six Titles, Earnhardt Sr, Jeff Gordon in his younger days winning so often we all hated him, and let's remember The King, Richard Petty won twice as many races as even Schumacher could manage. I don't recall any team owner threatening to quit.

Talking of NASCAR, does anyone else cringe when commentators tell us "these are the best drivers in the world." They are certainly great at what they do, there is no denying that, as we have seen drivers like Montoya and Ambrose struggle to compete. Now Ambrose has decided to vacate his V8Supercar seat after a couple of races where he has not been on the pace. Very odd, or is the standard of today's drivers in that series better than their NASCAR counterparts? Ambrose you will recall was clearly the best road course driver and did not disgrace himself on the ovals either, so what does that tell us? This is another of those stories that make you go, Hmm? Just like Alonso and Manor.

Not much has moved me to comment lately, but there were a sequence of crashes that I felt the need to make observations on. They are the Xfinity crash at Daytona with Kyle Busch, Alonso's McLaren crash at Barcelona, and a support race driver at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide that I apologise that I do not know his name.

Kyle Busch was involved in a fairly innocuous side swipe at the exit of the Tri-Oval. Not enough to damage the car or the driver one would think. It then traveled over 500 feet to hit an unprotected concrete wall at what would be the inside wall from Turn 6 on the road course. He crossed over 400 feet of asphalt which is there as the run off for Turn 1 on the road course. The car appears to have not slowed and the black tire marks would appear to be from the yaw on the car. So why was Kyle, one of the top drivers, not able to turn or spin the car? There is the usual knee-jerk reaction like we saw with Dale Earnhardt with the cry for "safer barrier" everywhere, even though those calling for it accept they do not know it would have made a difference in this case. The tires that were placed for Sunday are a much better solution. Just think back to Massa and Perez at the end of the Canadian F1 race last year. High speed frontal impact into tires and no injury to either of them.

There has not been one word about the car and what happened before or during the impact. Now Kyle's legs may have just flopped around and hit things inside the foot well, but isn't that worth looking at? Did the foot well collapse or did something penetrate it? No one is saying anything. And why could it not stop or change direction? We saw a somewhat similar crash in the 500 where Larson spun and was nowhere near that wall. Answers on a postcard please.

And then there is Alonso, still recuperating at home for a crash that is recorded as a 105 kph hit. Cause of the crash given as the wind, going wide on the astroturf, but nothing wrong with the car apparently. Other drivers think this is all very strange. A low speed side impact in a car designed to protect drivers better than almost anything else on a race track causes concussion. OK, get that, but NFL footballers get concussion and are cleared to play a game where the object is to hit people the following Sunday. Alonso had three days in hospital and his ability to drive in Melbourne in twelve days time is still in doubt?  Something we are not being told.

Then there is the crash in Adelaide on my street circuit. Car breaks right front suspension on the apex curb of the second part of the chicane. One hit too many. So straight on into the unprotected concrete wall right on the edge of the track at Turn 3. The normal accident here is to go in at an angle where it is better to slide down the wall than be thrown back into the path of other cars by a tire wall. No mention of injuries. So is a V8Supercar built better than a Xfinity or F1 car? OK, slower impact than Busch but much closer, and a lot quicker than 105 kph.

We've seen cars disintegrate and drivers walk away. Scott Sharp in the Petit Le Mans a few years back. 90% of that car was destroyed and he unbuckled and walked away. The Audi at Le Mans last year, vertical between the catch fence and concrete wall. I think it was Duvall and not surprisingly he went home to think about that. McNish a few years earlier over the guard rail. Cars can be built to protect drivers, so how about NASCAR having a think about that. Cheaper to fix cars that can race anywhere rather than spend millions on walls that may not be hit again, or install a fix that other series like the IRL don't like.

Sorry for the lack of blogs lately, been away and busy on new tracks, but during that time the implosion of F1 that I have predicted for a while due to the business plan has finally arrived. And what's the reaction? The sky's falling. We may have to go to three car teams or customer cars. So what? The current format of two car teams and all constructors is fairly recent for most of us old enough to remember where this sport came from.

With today's set up Sir Stirling Moss could not win the Monaco GP in a single car privateer team with a bought Lotus 18, and we would all be the losers. 1,2,3 and yes even 4 car teams were the norm. What is so important about 2 car teams? Does it fulfil Bernie's desire to see neatness and order for those fleeting seconds when the cars are on the grid, or is it that the latest pit buildings can only accommodate 2 car teams?  I for one would prefer to watch a race with three Ferraris or McLarens than a bunch of HRTs running around at the rear.

And why not customer cars? It is not that long ago we had Toro Rosso and Super Aguri running someone else's chassis and engine, and have we forgotten how F1 grew to become what it is today? Where would Sir Jackie and Ken Tyrrell have been without Matra, March and the Cosworth DFV. Buying a cheap competitive engine from Cosworth saw the best period of racing, even if Ferrari called them "garagistes." Good close competition that saw the birth of Williams and made possible James Hunt and Hesketh. Here in the US Champ Car had it's greatest success with teams buying chassis from March and Lola and bolting in an engine purchased from someone else, compare it to today's spec racing. 

I must admit I am surprised that there is not the usual suspects of wealthy businessmen waiting to snap up these teams, all thinking they are smarter than the last lot. Gene Haas thinks he is and has said so. "They all made mistakes." Yes, and you think you know something they did not? How many of these people were smart enough to make a lot of money and they all made mistakes? Look at the list for the last ten years. The mistake they made was not to understand the business and how the money goes around, or doesn't. Until the way the money is distributed changes we will have to be happy with three car teams and/or customer cars, although Horner says he can't afford a third car. Really? How many chassis has Vettel used this year? Perhaps not buying a new "motorhome" next year will cover it?

So NASCAR has "reacted quickly" to the death of Kevin Ward Jr. and made a new rule for drivers to stay in their car unless in dire emergency. Not so quickly as some local oval series, but they have reacted.

That is the point. They react to an incident and stick a band aid on it. How about being pro-active? Blind Freddy could see that sooner or later a driver wandering around on a hot race track seeking payback was going to be hit. It took a death to fix it. But what if Tony Stewart had not been the driver to hit Kevin? Suppose it was just another Saturday night local racer? Would we even have heard about it? We kill or maim people every week on tracks in the US, and unless someone well known is involved who cares? Ray Dunlap said on NASCAR Race Hub in the week that 25 people are killed a year, and I bet that is just in the NASCAR related races he knows about. What about kart tracks, private testing, track days etc?

I saw the reaction of one track after a 12 year old boy on a kart was decapitated for the lack of a barrier. They immediately installed a fence, straw bales, tires and plastic barriers. They said they could not do it beforehand as they could not predict where the accident would happen! There are tracks built all around the world where the basis of their design is the prediction of accidents and measures put in place to prevent or ameliorate them. We have over 100 years of knowledge and experience and now computer simulation to assist us, so why do we still have tracks that do not install the basic systems or do so incorrectly?

It took a big wreck at Watkins Glen for drivers to ask for improvements. Let's see how fast NASCAR reacts to that.

Let me say at the outset that I am extremely sorry for the family of Kevin Ward Jr. No one deserves to die doing what they love, especially in these circumstances. However, I have on numerous occasions have had cause to remind drivers who are out of their cars at the scene of a crash that they are not immortal. They have just crashed there and so can someone else. Get over the barrier. It is unfortunate that it is part of the NASCAR and Sprint Car culture to wait and find the 'culprit" and wag the finger or throw something, all with cars going past, albeit at non-race speed. As we have seen they do not need to be going at race speed to inflict mortal injuries. This has to stop.

As with most of the expert witness cases I handle the only person who really knows what happened is no longer alive to tell the story. Only Kevin really knows what he did, I am sure Tony was not expecting it. What is remarkable is the Sheriff's involvement. I can only recall one case where the police attended, rare in itself, and conducted an investigation. Usually they decide this is a private facility and leave. On one case they did detail the fight that followed the accident and injury, but not the accident!

So why this case? Is Tony really seen to be a driver likely to run over someone on purpose? No way, he may be tough, but he lives for racing, and I for one cannot believe it. From the video I have seen it looks as if the rear wheels move away from Kevin, not toward. If it were Jimmy Johnson, Jeff Gordon, or Jr. would the police really be looking at this?

So Tony does not drive at Watkins Glen, and rightly so. We saw some great racing, especially my Aussie mate Ambrose showing them how to really drive. Some hard racing but clean. Well done AJ, fought for and deserved that first win. I still find it hard to perceive that oval racing is so different that guys like Ambrose and Montoya cannot translate their obvious world class talent into oval wins, but it obviously is.

What was graphically demonstrated was how in need of an full course update Watkins Glen is. I have offered to go up and provide a report but of course NASCAR knows better. That is why we still use sand barrels and tire walls built totally wrong. Several drivers offered the same comment but then said it would cost too much. Watkins Glen is owned by the largest track owner in the world, ISC, and they cannot afford it? I loved Alan Bestwick's comment that the track narrows near the site of the big crash due to a "natural feature," meaning the tunnel. What, it was there before they built the track? Just one of the many ill-informed comments. This layout is great, it just needs bringing up to modern standards, and yes you can accommodate different users and configurations. Even the guard rail is still acceptable, it did not fail and was a softer hit than a concrete wall. Just a pain to repair. It is just in the wrong place on most of the track.

Marquez won his tenth straight MotoGP at Indy, but who was there to see it. Red Bull must be paying for all this as the crowd certainly isn't. Same story with the Tudor Sports car race which thankfully is not to return. MotoGP needs to go to tracks that show off their product, not just somewhere that pays the most.