Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Yes folks it was still polluted and dusty. What amazes me is the amount of dust that was thrown up at pit stops. The teams are meticulous about keeping the pit stall clean, so how after they have been there four days is it still throwing up clouds of dust. Is it raining dust? Is the concrete not finished properly? From the look of the sky you would think it was raining dust.

I hope the Indians like a parade as that is what we got. Predictably there was only one place to overtake, and even with DRS evenly matched cars could not do it even there. Button passed Alonso at Turn One, where the predictable major accident happened, and somewhere Webber on that first lap but I did not see it. After that Alonso passed Webber at a pit stop, and that basically was it. Yes there was some shuffling down the order, but mostly because of fast cars catching up after the first corner accident.

Hamilton proved how hard it was to pass by his now compulsory accident with Massa. It was a replay of Singapore and Monaco, but this time the Stewards pinged Massa for it. Even I as a Hamilton fan thought he was the one in the wrong, not sure he is not a liability to McLaren at the moment. Massa then changed his "bouncing" front wing, not damaged in the accident, so what was that about, and then ran over a different curb and broke the other side of the front suspension. He cannot have been the only driver to run over an orange curb can he? Is Ferrari the new "Lotus" where the suspension is designed down to a weight and not up to a strength? Like Lewis, Massa is not doing Ferrari any favors. Not that it was his fault but he nearly took out Alonso exiting after his first pit stop, and was not alone in nearly contacting someone at this badly designed exit.

Oh yes, Vettel won, Button could not catch him, and that was the race. Hope the crowd enjoyed modern F1. There was a stupid piece about how India could become an F1 "Highlight." Not on this track layout it won't.

Schumacher beat his team mate to fifth place, and both Mercedes beat Hamilton home, Lewis having no answer to their pace.

I came across this nice quote today from a script writer. You know my thoughts about physically drawing tracks rather than using a computer. Now this,"When I write a script, I write a script. The last thing I do is put it into a computer. If you actually have the physicality of writing down the words, you take it in."  Absolutely.

Well no cows on track yet, but watch out for those curbs, they jump out and destroy your supension! Well it did to Massa. Very strange why he is the only one the way they have all been grass cutting and curb hopping. I would have thought they would have done something with that second corner of the chicane, concrete it overnight at least. Still, what's a bit more dust.

Unlike most Tilke tracks this one seems to lack any distinctive architectural features, it could be anywhere. Except for the air polution and dust that is. Not a great advert for travelling to India. "Delhi belly" has of course struck with McLaren flying in new troops to replace those effected. Ferrari are in trouble with the tobacco police here in India. With all that air polution I would not have thought smoking was a big issue.

The Massa front wing is drawing some attention, as it should, and Mercedes suddenly found a few seconds a lap overnight, so what were they up to? Still did not help Michael get in to Q3. Toro Rosso did well though. Qualifying was not the usual exciting session, with three cars choosing not to set a time and Vettel clearly quicker. I like Button on the radio telling the crew he has no grip, and he is running around fourth. There are a lot of drivers who would like to have similar levels of no grip. I guess it is down to expectations. How does someone like Ricciardo drive around at the back in the HRT without being mentally destroyed?

Rumors abound that Kimi has signed for Williams. If he is watching this he must know something we don't about next year's car. Still it will be great to have him back and I don't care if he mumbles, it's his driving I want to see.

Finally we have the riot at the cancelled concert by Metallica. Let's hope the race is not red flagged! Still there were a lot more people at the scheduled concert than the track yesterday.

The most fun so far has been reading of the adventures of journalists and commentators. Apparently Bernie has been not allowing a view of the track from the media center for several of the recent tracks, but here the TV commentary boxes have no windows either. So, you only see what Bernie wants you to see on TV?

The first impression is of the smog, and then the dust. There are acres of asphalt run off except where it is most needed at the first chicane. Just about every driver has short cut the second corner across new dry turf amidst clouds of dust and grass on the track. Well we have dogs on the track and cows in the paddock, so a real paddock eh? I guess we have to ask what if a cow wants to go on the track, can anyone stop it in a country where it is sacred?

Some good elevation changes and several nice corners, but it is like the Curate's egg, "good in parts." The pit-in looks like Valencia, China and several other Tilke tracks, and is marginal, but pit-out is as bad as Korea. We've already seen a near miss as it dumps cars out onto the apex of Turn One. Why pit exit could not have been run around the inside of One and exit onto the outside of Two is hard to understand. And then there is the crooked pit building and pit lane, and the lawn. Go figure.

If ever we needed evidence of flexible front wings we got it with Massa. It was odd as only the Ferrari seemed to find bumps to make the wing bounce up and down and drag on the track. Did not slow Massa down though.

We saw a few incidents, D'Ambrosio the biggest of them in a very strange lose, and that wall is too close anyway. The marshals need some training though, and at one point a photographer casually got over the wall to get a closer shot of a Williams stuck in the gravel. He was one of the guys I referred to yesterday who feel immortal, like the marshal who stood on the side of the car facing the oncoming cars.

I watched on Fromsport on a Spanish Channel as the BBC one would not go full screen for some reason. The surprising thing was the commentators spent most of the practice talking about MotoGP and WSBK! I know it was not scintillating viewing, but is there nothing else to talk about?

They could talk about the Gribkowsky trial which started this week, with Bernie due to testify mid November. Nothing startling yet.

Mercedes were strangely way off the pace, Michael almost last and Rosberg not much quicker. Down among the new boys at 5-6 seconds off the pace. Now it was said they were working on race set up, but I cannot believe they would not do one quick run on low fuel. Working on next year's parts? Which is reported to include a front wing F-Duct. Thought that stuff was banned, and not sure why you would want to stall the front wing anyway. A way to run more air under the car to replace that lost by the exhaust? 

Not sure today told us much other than the usual suspects will dispute qualifying and the race. Not much running on the hard tire today.

Long time Renault Team Manager John Wickham has quit, not even travelling to India. Sinking ship?

The events of the last couple of weeks have given me pause to reflect on how life and death are flip sides of the same coin, and how often whether people survive or die an incident is based on how the flip of that coin goes. We are mortal and will die, although I have seen too many people in racing who think they are immortal!

We see Dan Wheldon die in an accident we have seen many times before with results ranging from drivers walking away to fatalities. Mike Conway's accident at Indy kept him out of racing for a year, but he recovered from what looked a similar incident. Indeed, I think 15 cars were involved at Las Vegas, and most of the drivers walked. Talking of the number of cars, much has been made of 34 cars on a 1.5 mile track. Tune in this weekend to watch NASCAR run 43 cars on a half mile paper clip oval. Any comment Jimmie Johnson?

We see Marco Simoncelli die in a simple get off that he and many others have had over the years. Kevin Schwantz at Phillip Island two years in a row! Marco was just in the wrong place this time, as was the Moto2 rider a year or so ago.

While we were mourning these two great competitors three others from off-road racing died in a plane crash. How many times have we seen this with sportsmen, especially motorsport, rushing from one event to another? Rick Hendrick's great loss of a few years ago, Graham Hill, former F1 Champion killed after he stopped racing, and David Coulthard walking away from a fatal crash where the pilots died. I see a great friend, Skip Jackson, Australian Sprint Car Champion and Knoxville fan favorite, be diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer at the age of 42, after a purely fortuitous blood test, and survive. Chance. Then there is that great Austrlian driver, Peter "Perfect" Brock who died after retiring in a fun rally driving a replica Cobra Coupe built by his American namesake. What were the odds of that?

So where does falibility come in. Everything we do involves us humans, and we are all falible. When I see a fatal crash I think of the tracks I've built or approved and think "there but for the grace of God go I." As I have said in presentations on track design, we are becoming over-reliant on simulation and computers, and too clever for our own good as a result. As it happens I received my monthly copy of the Engineers Australia magazine yesterday, and there are three articles related to this. One is from a forensic accident investigator who writes, "No matter how hard we try to prevent these events, they will still happen because we are all human and errors will occur despite our best efforts." He goes on to say "New processes and materials are constantly arriving on the market, and the uses to which they are put constantly changes. What doesn't change seems to be the human factor. Insurance records historically show that about 50% of all accidents are directly related to human error and that figure has hardly changed over the years."

In the same magazine is a report of the brand new grandstand in Wollongong, yes there is such a place, being damage by high winds. This is the structure we are talking of, not the roof panels. How does that happen in this day of computer analysis? At college in the mid-sixties we had to analyse by hand and slide rule the new cantilever grandstand roof at the Sheffield Wednesday soccer ground. This obviously had been originally designed a few years earlier just the same way, but still stands to this day without incident.

So to sum up. I have been known to say that track design is more art than science. One of my favorite engineering sayings is "it's more art than science, but at least we are doing the art more scientifically these days." The following quote is also from the Engineers magazine, and I wish I had know it earlier. It is a 1960's definition of structural engineering, but I think you will see the message."Structural Engineering is the art of moulding materials we do not wholly understand into shapes we cannot precisely analyse, so as to withstand forces we cannot really assess, in such a way that the community at large has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance." Touche.

India is receiving a lot of press at the moment, which is I guess why they wanted the race. Coverage is a two edged sword though if you have the corruption and poverty that India enjoys. The following is a report from Fox News: