Bob Barnard Track Engineering

While I've been off in Germany at the Professional Circuit Owners Forum it would seem that between Bernie, the Texas State Comptroller and Tavo the "Circuit of the Americas" and the F1 GP have sailed off into the sunset. Not unexpected as any regular reader would know, none of this made any sense from the start.

The Forum was hurting from the current recession and the numbers were down, but the quality of most of the presentations was not. Some really good information being presented. If you can get to Orlando for the US Circuit Owners Convention on the 29th & 30th of this month you will not be disappointed in that respect.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are getting to the end of the 2011 season with one more F1 race to go. Still a few snippets of interest though. It seems the British Serious Fraud office is sniffing around Bernie's little deal with Gribkowsky, that must be fun for him. In a similar vein the Venezuelan Congress is reported to be investigating how the sponsorship deal with Williams was done without their blessing.

Suzuki has pulled out of MotoGP making next year's field even thinner, and the man in charge of DORNA who run the series says something has to change. Well your running it so what's the problem. Oh, maybe you are the problem that got us here in the first place.

Let us spare a thought for all those who have given their lives and continue to serve to protect our freedom. As we have graphically seen in the Arab world, and especially in Syria, how precious it is and how people are willing to sacrifice their lives to get it for others. I am grateful to have been born at a place and time that has not asked me to make that sacrifice.

So to Abu Dhabi and the F1 race. I did not watch it I confess, I am ploughing through thousands of pages of evidence in a fatal accident to develop an opinion, and it will not be pretty. So I have to go on the reports which have Hamilton and Button quickest, but it is only Friday. Rosberg is doing his usual trick of being amongst the slowest. You would think that signing a contract extension with Mercedes would have sparked him up. So the driver market is slowly being set, but there are a bunch of young hopefuls including Canadian Robert Wickens who drove this morning hoping to impress. 

Alonso and Vettel found the fence at Turn One during the second session. I think I have remarked before how no one had hit the wall here in two GPs, which indicated to me that the drivers were not real happy with the proximity of them and like a street track were keeping a bit in hand. Not so today it seems.

Talking of street tracks, it seems the promoter of Baltimore cannot pay his bills. Despite a very good crowd it cost more to stage the race than they paid to see it. A lesson for New Jersey where the fee is many multiples of what Indycar and ALMS would have asked. They did not have a sponsor you will respond. And how much would that be? It makes no difference, in F1 you don't get the money, Bernie does.

Bernie has finished his time in court and jetted down to Abu Dhabi. There is a lot more to come in this case, none of what Bernie says make sense, especially the arch deal maker being shaken down by a banker. 

Seems Mallya's airline is in big trouble, can't pay its gas bill or leases on planes, and the share price going down faster than his Force India cars. Sorry Sahara Force India.

Sir Jackie Stewart says he is very concerned at the lack of information coming out of Austin, as well he might. Meanwhile, was anyone else shocked at the amount of empty seats at the NASCAR race in Texas last weekend? With the "Chase" nearly over and two main guys duking it out for the title you still cannot sell tickets! NASCAR is in big trouble.

Another who is looking more in trouble is Bernie. The German court activity has at last woken the sleeping giant, the British tax man, to have a look at what Bernie has been doing and why. This should be interesting.

Great to see Alex Zanardi winning the hand bicycle class in the New York Marathon, you cannot keep a competitor down. On to the Olympics!

Just as you can't stop Kimi from racing it seems. Talks have been confirmed for him to come back to F1 with Williams.

Sorry for the gap in blogs, been on the road to check out our new home in Raleigh, NC. Still, it is quietening down with the seasons ending. I am surprised at the lack of comment my previous blog provoked, but we will fix this one way or another.

I have seen enough photographs of unsafe race tracks and read enough transcripts of fatal and debilitating accidents at events here in the US to say something has to change. I can no longer go on listening to “that’s how we have always done it,” “we have not had an accident before, “and yes “it was good enough for Can-Am.”  That was only forty years ago, so what’s changed?

Look around, nothing is built or operates “as we have always done it.” Can you just turn up and get on an airplane, and is it driven by propellers? Do men with red flags still walk in front of cars in England? Does LA still have smog now we have emission controls and do cars still do 8 mpg? Does Detroit still build cars that are “Unsafe at Any Speed” as exposed by Mr.Nader? No, no and no. Most of motor sport in the US is operating in a time warp, and seems divorced from the rest of our activities.

Where else can an owner go and build a tower block, road, bridge or airport without resorting to professional services, working to standards and obtaining approvals? In motor sport an owner blissfully unaware of any standards for construction or operation can set up shop and start, and then ten years later say he has all this experience. Yes, usually of doing it incorrectly. There is a great joke about the guy who fell off the Empire State and as he passed some lower windows an office worker asked how he was doing. “So far so good” was the answer.

Every week across America thousands of spectators, officials and competitors risk death and injury by attending local events at substandard facilities run by untrained and unqualified people. That is not totally their fault, the lack of published standards or licensing procedures as occur in most of the rest of the civilized world cause them to be unaware that they are doing anything wrong. The National Fire Protection Authority has a guideline for safe operations at facilities, NFPA 610, but how many people know of it, and as a guideline it has no legal standing other than best practice. It does not cover construction, nor a lot of the operation, but it is something.

The motor sport authorities are diverse in the US under an umbrella group called ACCUS that represents us to the world body, but plays a limited role in National and local events. The variety of racing bodies on two and four wheels makes some unified approach probably impossible. The insurers play a major role in this situation, so are they the ones to fix it?

How is it that the civil authorities do not become more involved, as though what goes on at a motor sport even cannot be criminally negligent? God forbid we get to the situation of Italy where the police and courts become involved, ask Sir Frank Williams how that works. But I see definite circumstances where in my opinion criminal negligence should be invoked, and perhaps this is what is required to make track owners and operators wake up to their responsibility and liability.

The media and the public create an outcry for answers when a high profile racer like Dan Wheldon dies, so what sort of Tsunami of opinion would be created if they knew that it was a weekly occurrence at the lower levels of the sport. Elderly contractors dying after being dragged onto a “hot” track to give a quote on some striping. Young children dying or being terribly burned due to the lack of proper procedures and emergency response? Innocent spectators being hit by debris and being killed or maimed for life because of incorrectly designed walls and fences? And that is the tip of the iceberg, just the very small proportion of the incidents that go to litigation and the even smaller number I get to see.

So, what to do? I can no longer go on accepting this is how it has to be. I don’t know how to change this, but I am going to try, starting now. I will use what is left of my professional life to achieve this. Initially I believe it should start by working with the sport and those involved like ACCUS and the insurers, and groups like the SCCA who have at least attempted to address this issue. Failing that then it is time the public knew, and who knows where that leads. We do not want the Government involved, and I care about the sport too much to close down these facilities. The joke is, and it is a bad one, that in most instances the fixes are not expensive; moving walls, grooming run offs, building proper tire walls and fences. These can be done by the track maintenance or volunteers, and staff can be trained and written procedures put in place; cost and ignorance cannot be an excuse any more for not doing it right. As I wrote the other day, being at a race track does not make you immortal.

It is interesting, and annoying, to compare the different views the media and those involve have of the same event. A good friend, Allen Petrich, who watched only snippets of the Indian GP, commented how at odds were the comments of ESPNF1 compared to my blog.

I see this all the time, and it has an element of "The Emperor's new clothes" about it. I heard the SPEED pit reporter say what a "fabulous circuit" India was. What basis has he for saying this, is he just mouthing the press release from Bernie? Too many journalists do not know anything about what they are seeing and reporting on, so just repeat what someone with a vested interest has told them. Drivers say they love the track. Do they really are are they just part of the business. I admit India may be a fun track to drive around. There are many like that, Barber here in the US is I'm sure a fun track to drive on your own, but race? That is a different matter, and that is what we are here to do. Tracks need to produce good racing, overtaking opportunities and not just corners thrown in just to have one. There were a few of those in India. The "parabollica" was great, and if you did not have the next two slow corners we could probably have seen overtaking into that nice downhill right, but as it was there was no way to get close enough. 

Of course Bernie says it was all wonderful, he had his check a long time ago, and as an event it went OK, as a race it was awful, but that is my opinion, and a few others. Bob Constanduros has been writing a "postcard" from India on Pit Pass. Bob is a long time F1 track commentator and thought the race was interesting, good battles going on for 14th! Now I am not saying Bob has a vested interest, but who do we think suggests tracks use him? Bob comments in his Sunday piece that he had lots of tweets about the boring race, so there are some more of us out there.

Have a look at the ESPNF1 piece on media reaction. "Great weekend, forgettable race," and see what I mean,

http://en.espnf1.com/india/motorsport/story/63151.html

I understand that people like Martin Whitmarsh are going to say it is all great, they can see dollar signs from Indian sponsors, but the media have a responsibility to tell it like it is. Unfortunately the motor sports media seem to think it is in their interest and their employers to beat up how good everything is. Most of us true fans can tell for ourselves thank you.

The "lease" of Silverstone by a Qatar based group that was denied so strongly now seems to be happening, and a good job too says Bernie. 

"It's what Silverstone needs," he said. "They need to let the professionals run it."

"The new owners will put proper people in, commercialise it and run it properly. They will get the job done. They won't muck around. Europe has got to understand that Europe will be sold to the Chinese or India or these people in the Middle East." Ouch! I'm sure the BRDC who have run Silverstone for 60 years are glad that a bunch of Arabs with no motor racing history can come in and show them how to run it "professionally." Yas Marina is such a success the developer has had to have the Government take over.

Where does Bernie think all the knowledge and development has come from to build the sport to where it is, Korea? As far as I know all the tracks are designed and built by Europeans, and you will usually find a European running the place.

Oh sorry, I guess Bernie is talking about all the essential hotels and BS that he loves to see.