Bob Barnard Track Engineering

The Mole, aka Peter Windsor I suspect, has a different take on Adams sudden departure. It still involves Bernie, but his take is that Bernie forced him out as Adam was one of very few who critized Bernie from inside F1. Bernie said recently that the reorganization of Williams should have started at the top, i.e. Adam. The scenario is Bernie needs Ferrari, McLaren and Williams to sign on, and knows Red Bull and Toro Rosso will go along for the money, and Sauber will do what Ferrari wants anyway. So offer Sir Frank a deal, Sir Frank says yes please, Adam says no, so no more Adam.

Another theory, but one of the comments suggested Adam would take "gardening leave" and turn up at CVC, along the lines I suggest. Bernie and Max Mosely had some famous disagreements, it did not stop them working together, and in my scenario Bernie is not there anyway.

Joe Saward has a piece about how our friends at CVC are going to be rewarded further for their investment in F1, with an extension of their loans maturity to 2017, the end of the next Concorde Agreement. In the meantime the return for investors is guaranteed at 5% over bank rate, and they can get ready for a float. Are we never to be rid of these parasites?

Now Thailand wants a GP, home of Red Bull why not? More the merrier. We'll be able to run the whole series in Asia soon.

So, did Sir Frank get up this morning and decide that Adam was below Parr, just when the team looks like regaining some form? Patrick Head has left the team to go run the flywheel hybrid system development, and Sir Frank was supposedly stepping aside with Adam the heir apparent. Now he has gone, with all the usual bumf about "pursuing other interests" and "spending more time with the family." We all know what that all means, and it's effective immediately, don't bother to collect your things we will send them on. 

What surprised me was the lack of comment from F1 observers, just reprinting the press releases. No surmising what happened? One scenario is of course Adam and Frank just fell out, but over what, the family silver? I have a much more devious thought, Adam got a better offer, but what could be better than running an F1 team? Running the sport. David Cameron was brought in, apparently by CVC, to run Allsport after Patrick McNally retired, and was being seen as the logical successor to Bernie. But not to be, he left a few weeks ago. Is it just my suspicious mind that just when Bernie wants to float F1, and the lack of succession is seen as a problem by some, that the only man to have overseen a public flotation in F1 is now on the market?

I did turn on the Indycar race yesterday afternoon out of professional interest, and I have to agree with Allan McNish's comment that the 2012 cars look like overgrown karts. Never mind the ugly noses in F1, these are ugly. Why leave the front wheels unprotected if you are worried about interlocking wheels? Let's shroud them as well, and then we will be back to the streamlined Mercedes F1 car of the 50's.

Just when you thought the British courts had settled the Force India/Caterham IP rights case, think again. The judge did dismiss most of the case, but notably found that some small parts of the first Caterham, then Team Lotus, did originate from the wind tunnel Force India used. So now Force India is saying to the FIA, the guys that fined McLaren $100m for possibly infringing Ferrari's IP rights, that Caterham should suffer a similar fate. This is all getting nasty. Hopefully this time the FIA will tell Mallya to get over it, but VJ is pretty desperate these days.

The Malaysian F1 Lottery has been run and won by Alonso in the Ferrari. Hats off to him and the team for that result, but as one commentator said, they rolled the dice and it came up double six. Not my preferred way of deciding a motor race, and yes I know strategy plays its part, but this is a contest between men and machines, not weather forecasters. Team mate Massa, for how much longer is the question, had another dreadful race and finished 97 seconds behind Alonso, despite his new car. Young Ferrari driver and a nominee to replace Massa, Sergio Perez, drove the race of his life to finish second in the Ferrari powered Sauber. Who knows what he might have done if it were not for the suspicious radio message that "we need this place" when running second. In my view this was a message from their engine supplier running in front of him.

It is interesting that in all the speculation about who could replace Masssa now no one has mentioned two out of work young ex-Ferrari powered drivers, Buemi and Alguersuari. I know they lost their drives for not performing as potential champions, but as a number two to gain Manufacturer points one of these could step straight in. The next question is, if Perez goes to Ferrari, where does the Telmex sponsor money go?

An odd race really. The two supposed "rain masters," Button and Schumacher, both failed to produce the goods, with Michael being the victim of a bad start and Grosjean finding him before his solo accident put him out. Roman is looking fast but fragile, while Kimi is doing a great job. As the "Iceman" said, it will be nice to have a normal weekend so they can see where they really are at. Kimi said he had only done an installation lap on the intermediate or wet Pirelli tires so not too shabby. Rosberg faded badly again and Mercedes need to work out what is going on, it would be a better show with them competitive in the race.

Word on the street is that Mercedes is not at all happy with the way the spoils are being divided in the next Concorde Agreement and are holding out to the point of taking Bernie and the boys to the European Court for non-competitive practices. That would mess with the float methinks.

Williams had another good race, but unusually Maldanado's Renault engine let go right at the end. Don't see that often. Red Bull have lost the plot a little, which makes a change for us fans. Vettel made a mistake again, perhaps he is vulnerable to pressure, while Mark drove his now usual steady race to fourth. McLaren once again cost Lewis the race with two botched pit stops, but he took it well, and could do nothing about the two guys in front. Were McLaren set up for a dry race and the others compromised? The Sauber is soft on tires anyway, so the rain worked for them, and the Ferrari chassis also seemed happier in the wet, at least with Alonso at the wheel.

So back to Malaysia. Why do we have to run this event at the time of year, or the time of day when you know it is going to rain. Not just rain, that's OK, it is the track flooding monsoon that is the problem. Getting up at 4 am to watch is bad enough, but having to sit through a red flag is punishing. Add to that my Fromsportcom.com connection was not behaving and were forced to listen some of the time to the inane Speed commentary. I swear they get worse.

If my French is correct, very doubtful, Concorde means agreement, peace and all that. Bernie announced yesterday to the world that he has Concorde with "most" of the F1 Teams for beyond 2012, i.e. after the current peace agreement runs out. Of course it is not a peace agreement, it is a way to divide up the spoils of the rape and pillage of promoters. Bernie names Ferrari and Red Bull as expected, and McLaren, which was not. Joe Saward suggests McLaren are just trying to outlast Bernie, which some of us may not get to see on Bernie's current form.

So, now Bernie has most of what he needs to float all or part of F1. Again Joe Saward suggests that the lack of a clear successor to Bernie would put off investors, but I think greed wins every time over common sense.

Meanwhile, out on track in the real world, McLaren are beating Red Bull and Ferrari, and everyone else as they did in Melbourne. An interesting few sessions with different teams being fast at different times, so hard to tell who was doing what. In the end McLaren are fastest, but looked very nervous at the back end under braking with Lewis losing it in Q1. Mercedes look fast, with the car suiting Michael a bit more than Nico it seems. Lotus have speed and it will be interesting to see what Kimi can do from his five grid place penalty, could be fun. You can't help thinking Jenson will have the measure of Lewis over a race distance, but let's see, if Lewis can win the start he might just drive away. There again Michael might just drive the pair of them into the pit wall. 

There have to be some disappointed teams. Caterham looked like they made the jump to the mid-field, but now we are racing they are stuck back with Marussia and HRT, with Petrov giving Kovalainen a hard time, and Force India seems to have lost some of the "force." Williams with Maldanado continue to surprise, but Senna is doing an imitation of his Brazillian mate Massa. Ferrari are probably the most disappointed. Massa managed to get his new for Malaysia chassis within 0.3 seconds of Alonso at the end, but for most of the time he was up to a second off the pace. He cannot be long for this seat. 

Sauber are a bit of a mystery. At one point they are among the fastest, and then off the pace. Low fuel runs?

Let us hope for a dry race as I think it will be a good one. Vettel said that using the hard tire to set fast time was not a strategy for the race, and he may be right, there is not much between the compounds and some cars were quicker on the supposedly slower tire, but as he can presumably run longer than those around him on the grid he just may have made the winning move.

Elsewhere Stoner continues to be fastest in MotoGP testing, but we also have a CRT machine getting in amongst the prototypes, so maybe they will not be a complete waste of time.

Indycar kicks off in St Pete if anybody cares.

Ferrari are to give Massa a new chassis for this weekend's Malaysian F1 GP to see if it is him that is the problem, or the car. There are no shortage of opinions on who should take his place at Ferrari, so I guess most of us have made up our minds already. Perez, Trulli and Sutil are three named this morning, and there has to be others like Bianchi who could step in. Given the form of Vergne and Ricciardo in their first race for Toro Rosso it could be a good idea to give a young turk a go. Alonso is not going to be around for ever. 

Martin Whitmarsh says he his happy Lewis was so annoyed after the Melbourne race, and so he should be. I think I told you the story of my mistake on congratulating Wayne Rainey on a good second place at Assen, and receiving an ear full of abuse. Champions never, ever, want to lose.

The stories continue to come out about floating F1, and Singapore seems to be the favored stock exchange. Bernie has looked at Britain and the US before, but it seems they want a bit too much information about your business for Bernie's taste. Ferrari and Red Bull are not denying they are doing a special deal, and one commentator suggested that Bernie's recent opinion about letting new teams use old cars from the top teams could be targeting filling the grid if teams like McLaren don't want to play anymore. It was also suggested that some teams, like McLaren, have other revenue streams, so sitting out for a few years from F1 would not be the end of the world.