Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Has Bernie had a change of mind, or is that heart? His whole philosophy has been survival of the fittest, reward the successful, sink or swim. The Concorde Agreement is based on rewarding the top teams with most money and giving the bottom teams absolutely nothing. So teams come and go, would be F1 team owners learn the hard way and either claw their way up or disappear.

Now it seems Bernie is taking pity on the three new teams, maybe we should let new teams run last years car from Red Bull or McLaren to get them going. What's this, sympathy? Bernie as always has the solution and always has had. Do as the NFL and NBA do and give the worst teams the best picks in the draft, equalize the money, and try and equalize the competition. So Bernie could just reverse the Concorde Agreement and give the top teams nothing, after all they are winning and should attract the most sponsorship, and give the bottom teams more money.

If you think about it that would dispense with the RRA, the resource restriction agreement, as the top teams would be restricted anyway. Just a thought. I suppose the rude letters from Ron Dennis and Luca will arrive shortly.

Talking of Luca di Montezemolo and Ferrari, is he really worried about their test performance or just setting us up by suggesting that he hopes podiums are possible. Alonso was second quickest at the last test so not too shabby.

No word yet from Beijing, so let's hope no news is good news. The season is getting ready to start for real with the Melbourne F1 GP and Sebring 12 hour, looking forward to that.

Very sad to hear of Robert Fearnell's passing at the age of 57. I met Robert first at Donnington in 1988 and on several occasions after as part of ROPA. One of the real good guys with a solid background in the sport, like so many that England produces. Too young.

The last test for F1 has been completed and produced very close times, with Caterham doing surprisingly well. The other two new boys were conspicuous by their absence, so not expecting too much from them. Kimi and Lotus set the fastest time of the week, but we will really have to wait until Melbourne to see who was sandbagging. Red Bull brought out their real parts this week and suffered a lot of reliability issues, but don't count them out. They seem to have found a way to still use the exhaust gas, but my understanding is that Charlie has said anything that helps the aerodynamics will be ruled out. Could be interesting.

Elsewhere the situation in Austin just gets worse with Tavo now suing the rest of the boys. I've been in this sort of mess when I promoted Phillip Island so I know how it distracts you from the real problems. Following the USF1 debacle the rest of the world must wonder if we know what we are doing.

VJ Mallya's problems continue to mount with the Indian Tax Authorities freezing his airline's accounts.

Oscar McIntyre, a 17 year old Queensland rider, died at Phillip Island on Saturday during a support event to the WSBK. Any death on a racetrack is tragic, and is more so to me if it happens at a track which I built. I have not seen the accident, but a friend who was there, Herod Lowery, e-mailed me to say Oscar went straight on at Turn One and crossed the track between Turns 2-3. Oscar was hit by two other riders who fortunately survived.

Now when I rebuilt the track I had an earth berm at the rear of the Turn One run off to prevent this, and somehow it has been removed. I would be very interested to know by who and why. Presumably the FIM Inspector OK'd this? It is hard to imagine the Turn One run off is not long enough if you saw Kevin Schwantz get off in 1990 due to a rear brake seizure at close to 200 mph and brush himself off and walk away. Large open run offs are a two edged sword, riders tend to try and "save it" rather than lay it down. I don't know if this is what happened, but if you can get hold of the video from 1989, first lap you will see some great on-board footage of Malcolm Campbell trying to ride out an off at Turn one, not successfully.

Oh, and the race? Checa crashed out of the first leg leaving his mate Biaggi to win it, but stayed on the bike to win the second with Biaggi recovering from a Turn One first lap incident to come through the field and finish second. Biaggi is leading the Championship, but it looks like a Checa/Biaggi veterans Championship. The bright note was the race form of the BMW.

Daytona 500 postponed for the first time in its history. That is amazing in itself given Florida's weather, and today does not look good apparently.

VJ Mallya looks to be getting further and further into trouble with his Airline, just when his F1 team is starting to fly.

The Gribkoswky trial has gone quiet, but Pit Pass has information that the lawyers are looking to do a deal and drop the bribery charges for lack of any real evidence. Gribkowsky still has a problem with the German tax man though. Where does that leave Bernie? Well it leaves him a lot poorer, and if Her Majesty's tax men want to know more about his trust then he could be even poorer. Still, always another would be F1 GP promoter to donate to the cause.  

Sebring Twelve Hour will be here in a couple of weeks. It should be an Audi benefit in the absence of Peugeot. Risi's Ferrari will also be absent for the first time in a long time. Sign of the times, economically, or a move to Grand Am? They managed to field a car at Daytona remember.

Our patience usually. Here we are with withdrawal symptoms from a cold and dark winter with no racing and needing something to stir the blood. What do we get? Testing. Just to show how irrelevant testing is, yesterday Hulkenburg in the Force India is fastest, and Senna in the Williams is among the slowest. Today Maldanado sets the fastest time of the week, in the Williams, and Di Resta in the Force India is way off the pace!

While testing does not show us who is really quick, it does throw up who is in trouble. HRT are not here at all and Marussia are running last year's car. Nothing much changing there. Lotus have a real problem with their chassis design and called off this week's test after seven laps when Grosjean said the car felt strange. Back to the factory. Ferrari are not on the pace and Alonso is saying the car is hard to understand. Sound familiar?

Indycar is testing the "Car of Today", the DW12, on ovals, and the drivers believe the problems have been solved with the handling. Pity there will not be many ovals left for them to drive on.

Over in Jerez di Puniet on the Aprilia powered CRT is putting in some good times, about 0.3 secs a lap off the Ducatti of Hector Barbera, which is better than the 5 seconds Colin Edwards managed, but it is a Ducatti and not the Honda, so let's not get too excited. The Duke is better this year by the sound of it, but still not on the pace of the Hondas.

World Superbike kicks off its season at Phillip Island, and testing there has seen a fair share of injuries. Leon Haslam for one has had surgery and may not start. Let's wait and see if Checa can keep it going from last year. He has been quick in testing so far.

NASCAR has its Dual 125's today, so I guess you can say the season has started.

30 days to go for the F1 season to start, and Australia loses its major sponsor, DHL! Of course good old QANTAS will step in, for a lot less I bet, but the CEO says sponsorship, corporate, ticket sales are all up! And they forecast to only lose $56m this year! But it is better value for money than the tennis.

Bahrain continues to be a political "bun fight" with British politicians and peers of the realm taking opposing sides of "should we go or not." Joe Saward has booked his ticket so it sounds as though it is on. Bernie had better be right "that it is only a couple of kids in trouble with the police." Nice one as always Bernie.  Like the guys in Sao Paulo just wanting to sell Jenson Button a hat. 

Just returned from a quick trip to Beijing to present on a new race facility there. I went to China twenty years ago, and the change since then is amazing. Then there were millions of bicycles and the odd truck, now there are millions of new cars of every make you can name, and I mean new! The only old cars were taxis. And then there were the car showrooms next to the hotel, every performance brand you could want except BMW, but there was Schnitzer, and Rolls and Bentley.

People seem happy and prosperous, and the buildings very impressive. Did not seem like a communist country to me, born capitalists I would say. I think the US and Europe are in trouble.

Not many motorcycles though, they seem to have gone straight past them. Interesting to read Mat Oxley's piece in this month's Motor Sport about Dorna the MotoGP rights holder looking to break the manufacturers hold on the series by bringing in the CRT, the street based bike. Kenny Roberts and I talked about this twenty years ago, how the manufacturers will race what they want to sell and not what fans want to watch. Where are the two-strokes? Kenny building his own machine was part of that, but he was on his own at that time. It now seems, almost too late, that Dorna has woken up.

Kenny and I used to look to F1 where the teams were their own manufacturers, and the cars were built as pure racers, not something "relevant" to what is sold. Gone are the days, as we can look forward to 1.6 liter V 6's, because that's what the manufacturers wanted just before they bailed out of F1. Racing is better off without the manufacturers as team owners, look at Peugeot. They come and go as they please without regard for the sport. It is people like Ron Dennis and Frank Williams that have made F1 what it is, not Mercedes or Honda. F1 should just look at Indycar, and even NASCAR, to see that fans will not watch what they do not like, whatever you call it. 

On a similar note, it is interesting that Nissan is entering V8Supercars. I believe Toyota tried to do this a few years ago and even went to court over being refused. V8's are popular in Oz because it is Red against Blue, Holden against Ford, it is a tribal thing. In the old ATCC days we had Nissan, BMW, Toyota involved, and yes it was big, but that was because of the personalities. Brock v Moffat and then Johnson, but still essentially Holden against Ford. If Nissan starts beating these two brands then V8's could have a problem, but now it is owned by a venture capital group they probably just see the dollars, for now.

The first days of F1 testing have come and gone with the usual suspects at the top of the time sheets, joined by Lotus, but we saw that last year didn't we? Apparently Kimi is giving the team great feedback and all seems well. Let's hope so, we would all enjoy Kimi mixing it again. But oh, aren't they ugly this year. It seems hard to me, as a non-aerodynamicist, to see the reason for the step in the nose, but they nearly all have it so it must do something. And have McLaren got it wrong? Doesn't seem so by the lap times. Let's see what Mercedes wheel out as their new car, time for them to perform. The new boys in Toro Rosso seem to be doing well, but it is all too early yet to really now who is doing what.

Over at the MotoGP tests Stoner and the Honda started where they left off last year, in front. Rossi is happier with the Ducatti and even talks of podiums, but no wins you notice. He is still about a second off the pace, which is a lot better than the CRT teams who are 5-10 seconds off. So much for equalizing the performance, no one is going to want to claim these yet. At those speeds a Moto2 might be the machine to have.