Bob Barnard Track Engineering

At the end of the interview I did Friday I was put on the spot to say racing is safe, and I said at the time that it was bound to come back and bite me. Well it did not take long. Marco Simoncelli passed away from injuries he received on lap 2 of the Malaysian MotoGP after falling, losing his helmet, and being run over by Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi who were too close to avoid him. Marco had his fair share of falls, and it appears to be just the wrong one in the wrong place. Did his hair contribute to his helmet coming off? Who knows but I'm sure someone will look at it. Very sad, too young, and spare a thought for Edwards and Rossi.

At least this time they red flagged the race.

Other big news is the "Grand Prix of America" F1 race to be run on the streets of New Jersey with the Manhattan skyline in the background to give Bernie his New York race. Given Austin is the "Circuit of the Americas" I would have thought that should have been given this title rather than the US Grand Prix. Rumors have abounded for this for a while, and this is still not official, press conference scheduled for Tuesday. So who is going to lose out, or are we headed for 25 races?

As expected there are lots of comments about the events at LVMS last weekend. As I am famous for saying, drivers are like attorneys, they all have an opinion. They range from "Indycar should not race on ovals" from Jimmie Johnson and Mark Webber, to Paul Tracy and Max Mosley who say "let's not over-react." Not two gentlemen with whom I usually agree. Indycar not racing on ovals? Where do they think this all came from? The series name says it all, and they have been racing ovals for over 100 years. Jimmie Johnson should look to NASCAR's short history and the deaths that have occurred.

I have been invited to participate in a panel discussion on radio "Voice of Russia," their world service out of Washington DC. It was to be today at 5 pm EDT, but Gaddafi takes precedence apparently, so it is now scheduled for the same time Friday. Should be interesting, but why does it take a fatality at a high profile race to raise this issue? As I have said before, the top end of racing gets safer cars and tracks, and the vast majority of racers are not being taken care of. In my role as an expert witness I see potential and actual fatalities weekly.

On better things Kevin Magnussen had a run in a GP2 car at Barcelona the last few days, along with GP2 returnees and young guns like Kevin and Alexander Rossi, both of whom acquitted themselves very well, worrying the top of the time sheet. Magnusssen has confirmed however that he is going to FR3.5 with Carlin next year.

The falling out in FOTA continues, and Ross Brawn announces he is concerned there are still loopholes in the exhaust diffuser rules, not that he is using them.

On two wheels, Colin Edwards has announced he is staying in MotoGP with BMW-Suter, one of the Claiming Rule Teams, CRT, i.e. grid make-up teams. Given BMW's poor showing in WSBK why would you think it would be any better in MotoGP?

Just a quick blog to comment on the two latest F1 GPs. Korea, one week after their second race, is already questioning the viability of paying Bernie $35m for the pleasure. Apparently the race costs $53m and they are getting $16m in ticket sales, not good arithmetic for a promoter, so they are asking Bernie to be "co-operative" and reduce the fee. It seems the locals believe that the money is better spent on developing the swamp than paying CVC.

In a similar vein the farmers are still  threatening sit downs at the Indian GP site, which looks almost ready, just finishing the grandstands. Sound familiar. The promoters ability to get a return on his $400m investment is the the same one facing Korea. did they not think about this stuff before signing up?

Dan Wheldon died yesterday doing what he loved. Should he have died? We will probably never know, but unfortunately in racing there is always that risk, and fortunately it is rare these days due to the safety systems in place. Track designers like myself must never forget that death or traumatic injury will result if we get it wrong.

Joe Saward says we should avoid trying to analyse the accident , leave it to the accident analysis guys, and we will. There are comments however about whether they should have raced there, but is Las Vegas really any different to Texas? Remember when CART cancelled a race at Texas due to the speed and G Forces? But Indycar had already raced there this year without this sort of problem. Would it really have made a difference if they were doing 215 and not 225 mph? Were 34 cars too many, I doubt it. I do worry sometimes about the standard of drivers down the field in Indycar, and especially those that do not race full time.

I will only offer this observation. Speedway Motorsports, Bruton Smith's tracks, are the only ones I know that put the cable on the track side of the mesh on the catch fence. I would add that there are places on ISC owned tracks that have no mesh at all, and neither practice is one I would endorse.

It is said that in F1 one great pass can be enough in a season. Hakkinen on Schumacher at Spa. Webber on Alonso at Spa. But yesterday we saw a non-pass that made a race. That half a lap, a series of silly 2nd gear corners where it is supposed to be impossible to pass, showed two great drivers at the top of their game. Webber as I said has shown it a couple of times this season, and Hamilton forgot all those silly incidents when trying to pass Massa to join him in a masterful display of courage, strength of mind and respect for the other guy. Which other two drivers would race so close, no pushing the other wide on the grass, always giving him just enough room, and no sudden swerves or chops? Button and Alonso probably, but few others. Made it worth stopping up past midnight for.

Then we were treated to twenty or so laps of Hamilton holding off Webber, shades of Villeneuve senior at Jarama. Lewis seems to have been in a different place this weekend, subdued but determined. Martin Whitmarsh explained the strange starts and races of Lewis and Jensen by saying they "lost" 10 pts of downforce on that first lap. One web site suggested rubber build up lodging in the front wing, but that would have been spotted and removed at the pit stop. Lewis had more and more front wing added at each stop, and half way through that last fraught stint asked over the radio if he had all there was. The answer was that the wing was maxed out. The lack of dry running on Friday was blamed by some, but Red Bull did not have the same problem. Just to rub it in Vettel threw in the fastest lap of the race by a second on the last lap!

You know I do not like the DRS. It is a false solution, created by Alonso's problem of getting past a slow car at Abu Dhabi. No question it works in those situations, so far so good. It does not work with two equal cars, and nor should it. We saw Lewis driving away from Webber through the twisty bits, but not quite getting the 1 second he needed to prevent Mark from wiping that out by no more technique and skill than pressing a button on the straight. If Lewis could have kept his 0.7 seconds he made each lap after 20 laps he would have a nice cushion. As it was he stressed himself to the limit of the car's performance each lap just to stay ahead. Made for good viewing, but I'm not convinced it is fair. Let's get rid of it and leave it to the drivers.

Strange to hear Alonso say near the end "I give up, I give up." After putting in 20 laps at qualifying pace he still could not get to Button, who in turn could not get to Webber. I think neither Lewis or Alonso are very happy with their cars at the moment.

Someone who is is Kovalainen. He finished a genuine 14th in the Lotus and mixed it with the back end of the mid-field on pace, beating both Saubers. He was ready to do it again straight away he said. Good to see. 

Congratulations to Casey Stoner on clinching the MotoGP crown at Phillip Island, that must have felt great, but I'm sure he would rather have done it by beating Lorenzo who did not start after losing part of a finger in a warm-up crash. So both Yamaha riders out of the race made for a sparse field, made sparser by race crashes including Rossi. Only ten bikes finished, very sad for the top level of Motorcycle racing. In Moto2 Bradl was pipped at the end by De Angelis which allowed Bradl to retake the title lead from third finishing Marquez by three points. With a return to form by Bradl the last two races could be fun.

In NASCAR land perpetual champ Jimmie Johnson crashed out of last night's Charlotte race and is last in the "Chase." So a new champ this year, if anyone cares. Not many at Charlotte to show they did.