Bob Barnard Track Engineering

The latest trouble to hit the upcoming Indian GP is that of visas for those wishing to attend. Did no one associated with the race do their homework on this and the tax issues? The Times of India is reporting delays for drivers, teams, and journalists, and yes the FIA officials. There is even a report Rosberg has been refused! Obviously this not an event of "National Significance." The FIA head of communications is quoted as saying, "if it takes three weeks to get a visa then many people won't be going, including me."   

Now I actually have a visa, and yes it took weeks, causing me to miss meetings set up by a Government Authority who should have known better. The system is designed so that you cannot get to the consulate directly to try and speed things up, very frustrating. I was a little surprised, I had not required a visa to go anywhere for years, and with a British Passport foolishly thought this would be simple. Seems nothing is simple in India and they don't really want people to go there, except terrorists. 

So, if any team needs a driver, let them know I have a business visa.

That man Martin Whitmarsh is in the news again, he must be vying for attention with Montezemolo who has been in the papers every day this week. It appears FOTA is looking at purchasing part or all of the CVC shares in F1, buying back the farm. There are lots of successful player and team groups who have done this, PGA, ATP, NFL and NBA, and then there is CART. Martin says that the teams owning the sport will bring stability, but you cannot help wondering if the smaller teams, like HRT who is not a member of FOTA, would agree? Anyway, it must be better than a venture capital group just sucking money out musn't it?

On the driver front there are rumors that both Kubica and Petrov could be replaced by Senna and Grosjean, Senna bringing more money then Petrov. Renault has announced that Red Bull is their "factory team," no surprise there, and Boulier is apparently covering the bases by talking to Cosworth. All sounds a bit messy. Rumor yesterday that HRT are to switch to Renault power, leaving Cosworth with one customer, and you can't see how that works financially. Talking of leaving Cosworth, their CEO just did.

A few items caught my eye today about tracks and calendars. Superleague cancelled their trip to South America as the track in Goiania in Brazil is not ready. Then I see MotoGP announcing a race in Argentina in 2013, provided the track improvements are done. See a pattern here? Next year's MotoGP calendar has been announced, with several tracks to be decided or races to be confirmed. Germany is one where the track is to be nominated as it seems the Sachsenring is unwilling to pay the 4m Euros Dorna want for the race. Dorna taking a leaf from Bernie? Then there is the comment "Despite doubts about its future, the Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island is also on the provisional calendar." Any of my Aussie friends want to shed some light on this? Is it racing in October that is the problem, or is it something more, like 4m Euros?

The row continues over the tax on the Indian GP competitors. I originally believed that this was about the teams earnings, and it may still be, but ESPNF1 has an article about the customs duty on importing the equipment.

http://en.espnf1.com/india/motorsport/story/58975.html

Now this is usually handled by international carnet, guaranteeing what goes in comes straight back out, but the Indian Authorities do not see this as a sport or an event of "National Significance," so they are not playing ball! Seems cricket and the Commonwealth Games are significant. Tells you how far motorsport has to go there.

Joe Saward's excellent F1 blog has a piece about a street race in Cape Town, how many GPs is Bernie going to put on a year? Starting to sound like NASCAR. Check out Joe's blog at:

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

Then there is the proposed New Jersey F1 street track which rates a mention by Murphy The Bear so must be getting serious:

http://murphythebear.com/blog/index.php/2011/09/13/unlimited-racing-championship-rands-go-to-jail-national-press-club-bust-leading-proto-teams-go-public-with-demands/

As always a good mix of rumor and gossip with always a grain of truth.

So Sam Michael has to move on from Williams, and where does he go? McLaren as Sporting Director. Now I call that a very good move, nice one Sam.

Someone else moving on is Stephen Mullens, long time legal advisor to Bernie. Now this story has been angled two ways. Some sites are slanting this as Stephen leaving because of the Gribkowsky affair, in which he has been implicated. He is said to have resigned from seven of Bernie's companies. Pit Pass of course has their own view. He is only involved in the family trust, and another lawyer from the same firm has taken over, so just a handover? Read it how you like, but in my experience very few people ever leave Bernie, either he looks after them too well or they know where the bodies are buried, or both. So unless Stephen has a health issue, this does have some "legs" as they say in the classics.

Bernie and the boys are not the only ones being sued, our old mate Tavo is being sued by an attorney who says he did work on the basis that he would end up with 5% of the GP deal. Tavo says he was working for free and never sent an invoice. Sounds like sweat equity to me then. Not content with having to manage the US GP and a new track Tavo has found time to advise South Africa, Mexico and Argentina on F1 GPs, despite not having staged one himself yet. The newspaper reporting all this went on to say "actual construction of the Circuit of the Americas’ infrastructure will begin "soon." What have they been doing all this time? 

Well despite all the suggestions that Red Bull had it wrong with gear selection Vettel won again. There seemed nothing wrong with his top end speed, driving passed Alonso to reclaim first place in a very ballsy move around the outside of the Curva Grande, two wheels on the grass. Alonso and Schumacher did Vettel a huge favor by firstly Alonso jumping past Hamilton and Vettel off the line, and then Lewis falling asleep at the restart after the safety car and letting Michael past. Lewis was probably the only one with the pace to bother Vettel today, but was trapped forever behind a vintage Schumacher who had to be told by Ross Brawn to stop weaving around before Charlie and the FIA did. I know he is fighting for position, but he goes beyond what is reasonable. Always has and gets away with it, whereas other unnamed drivers get called up to the Stewards. 

Lewis showed incredible patience during all this, to his detriment, while Button showed again that he has some grit this year. Mark Webber can't take a trick. You cannot believe his team did not tell him his wing was stuck under the car during the time it took to drive from the first chicane to the Parabolica, and how did he actually make it that far? So a good race which at times made me think the boys had all gone a little bit crazy with some of the moves, especially the first few laps. Luizzi's excursion down the grass was like watching a bowling alley, but he only made a spare. Team mate Riccardo's weekend carried on as it started, the car going into anti-stall at the start and taking 18 minutes to get right before joining the race. Daniel finished by so far back he did not complete enough laps to qualify.

Great to see the fans enjoying the race so much, even if Ferrari did not win. Tracks in America need to look at where they put the winners rostrum so that the fans can see it, and get near it. Too often it is tucked away in a paddock purely for TV and sponsors. Just look at Le Mans and Monza guys and see how it should be done. One of the many things Montezemolo has talked about this weekend is to make sure fans can afford to go to a race, not price it more than an around the world air fare. Of course that comes back to Bernie's promoters fees. Luca also went on again about teams running three cars or selling cars to lower teams so that we don't have the second class citizens running around 4-5 seconds off the pace. A bit like the old days in MotoGP when we had several teams with competitive bikes, and this is after all how Toro Rosso have survived and grown, so maybe not such a bad idea. He is continuing his concern that aerodynamics play too big a part in the cars these days, and how limiting testing forces too much reliance on simulation. As David Coulthard said during the BBC coverage, simulation will get you in the ball park, but you cannot simulate the real thing. That's why we run the race.

Tony Fernandes echoed Eddie Jordan's comments that the three new teams need to lift their game, no more excuses. Sounds like heads will roll at Team Lotus, or is that Caterham, if next year is not better. Having said that he has re-hired Jarno Trulli. What is that saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? So the seats are being filled. Red Bull is set, McLaren is unlikely to change even if no one is rushing to sign Button's option, Ferrari are probably set, Massa doing just enough lately, Mercedes have re-signed Rosberg and Michael wants to continue, Force India might replace Sutil with Hulkenburg and keep di Resta, Williams will keep Maldanado and A.N.Other who can bring some money, Sauber are keeping their two. Toro Rosso have new investors/sponsors/owners so look for a Spanish driver there, like Alguersuari, and Ricciardo? HRT also have new owners and will want a Spanish driver, and Luizzi probably has not done enough to stay on, so an opening for two new boys. Virgin will keep Glock and perhaps D'Ambrosio, with Lotus sticking with their two. That leaves Renault, where Petrov will keep his seat and we have to wait to see what Kubica can do.

So maybe three or four seats available. Grosjean seems destined for one of them, and then we have Bianchi, Vergne and some of the other GP2 brigade of hopefulls.

Thankfully Bernie has played down the chances of an Iran F1 GP, there being others in the queue already. Notice he did not say never.

Now some of my readers have suggested that my blog is late because I went back to sleep after the F1 race. Not at all, the second half of the Silverstone 6 hour was live streaming on Audi TV so we watched that. Made for a good morning, and now we have football. Peugeot won comfortably from Audi, but only after one of their cars and one Audi were both delayed early on and fought back through the field, but could not stop a petrol car from coming in third. The petrol cars had a good race between them as predicted, with the result coming down to who needed fuel at the end. The GTE Pro and Am classes both provided great racing, with the Ferraris coming out on top in Pro, and Porsche in the Am. Porsche had a good weekend, but the BMWs failed to live up to their qualifying form, but coming back in the latter half of the race to finish fourth in Pro. Audi pulled off one of their by now expected quick change acts, replacing the rear bodywork, wing, and undertray in just over a minute!    

Our old friend Luca has been very quiet lately. He could usually be counted on to provide some good ammunition for us bloggers, but he must be busy on his election campaign. His buddy has just resigned as General Secretary of FOTA among rumors he is also going into politics in Italy. So Luca says Domenicali has his full commitment, no he does not need Adrian Newey, even though he is "tired of losing the Championship at the last race." He likes the move to pay-for-view as long as their is a balance of free-to-air, I bet he does. Like Whitmarsh he is looking for F1 to move with the times and get on iPad etc.

Talking of Whitmarsh, he is trying to smooth out a potential problem with the Indian tax man who is likely to withold part of the teams income from the GP under Indian law. This has been simmering under the surface with the teams financial gurus trying to find a solution. Martin is playing down a boycott of the race, it does not need any more issues to deal with, but he says "you do not go to somewhere if you are going to be penalised." Our old friend Ron Walker from Melbourne must know how to solve that as I recall we had a similar potential problem with the Oz bike GP. Ron and his circuit mates are still carrying on about the new engine needing to be 18,000 rpm so it sounds right for the punters, or they will go elsewhere. Randy Bernard from Indycar just happens to be in Monza, but he has been meeting all sorts of people in the last year, and has Ron heard an Indycar?

Continuing the promoters theme our friends at Pit Pass, who I have said I suspect are close to Bernie, have floated the idea that with the demise of the Turkish GP F1 Group could be looking for another race to promote. Lo and behold Austin is suggested as a prime contender. I have always thought there is something or someone behind the Tavo thing, or am I a conspiracy theorist? Bernie used to promote a lot of races, but presumably worked out that this is a certain way to lose money. I guess if the Texas Government is paying the fee and Tavo's backers are building the track then promoting this race may not be such a risk. India and Poland, yes Poland, are other potential races mentioned. Apparently F1 Group has applied for the "Grand Prix of Poland" trademark. They had better pray that Kubica's upcoming time in the simulator or car is positive. We all hope it will be and it is great to hear he is recovered enough to start driving again in whatever form.

Red Bull pulled a surprise on the other teams by taking pole for tomorrow's race, well Vettel did, Mark was back in 5th after a less than stellar practice and qualifying. More KERS problems and an old engine, although Mark in his usual fashion refused to look for excuses. Hamilton and the team blinked in Q2 after setting a good time on the hard tires which would have seen him through and saved a set of options, but at the end of the session they put on the options to make sure of progressing. Should have stuck to their guns, but that is easy for me to say sitting at home. Vettel is running very little wing but still putting in great times through the fast corners, and has short geared the car which helps the drive out of corners but will put him in trouble for top speed if the others can get near him, a big if. So a different strategy which would presumably be ruled out if the teams have to nominate their eight ratios at the start of the season as that odd rule for 2014 states. More restrictions. Ferrari tried Massa towing Alonso around to try and get a good starting position for their home race, but ended up 4th behind the two McLarens. Tomorrow should be interesting with McLaren thinking they are in a good position, but don't they always.

Bottas secured the GP3 title with a win here, and Fillipi dominated the GP2 race but Grosjean already has the title and a possible F1 seat.

In Silverstone Peugeot went on to secure pole for tomorrow's race with the Audis second and fourth around the second Peugeot.The Rebellion is four seconds of the pole time, but only a second off the slowest Audi. All the petrol cars are within a second so that would be good to watch, if you can see it. Try http://tv.audi.com/#/01

Bit early for me and will clash with the GP. In GTE Pro the BMWs mugged the Ferraris with 1-2 in qualifying, with Porsche also strong. Pat Long put his GTE Am Porsche on pole, but it is hard to see Pat as an amateur.