Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Colin Chapman would have been proud. Sir Stirling Moss said that the front uprights were always on the margin, so both Lotus Renaults failing in the same way in first practice in Malaysia is totally consistent with the real Lotus legend.

Webber has bounced back from his slower than expected form in Oz, leading both sessions, but with the McLarens hot on his heels. Who knows who had what fuel load though, and I hope the Ferraris were working on set up because they are a long way off the time so far. There are some big gaps to the bulk of the field who are all two-three seconds off. The other Lotus continues to disappoint, and the sight of the HRT leaving the pits trailing a plume of oil smoke sums up their day. They are seven seconds off the pace so far, right on the bubble of not qualifying again.

Tire feel and wear is apparently totally different to Australia. At one point in the first session Button went out and immediately radioed in to ask if there was something wrong at the back of the car as he had no rear grip! Pirelli believe that anyone starting on the softs will only get eight laps out of them, and between the potential rain and the tires Button is expecting "mayhem." Well they wanted to make the races more interesting, or as Michael said, "a lottery." Not sure that is what I tune in to watch.

Following on from yesterday's piece on fuel consumption going up with the exhaust driven diffuser, it seems the Red Bulls are very marginal on fuel. We saw Mark pull into pit out as soon as he crossed the finish line in Australia, and it is now apparent he did not think he had the fuel to do the warm down lap. The Red Bulls also only did one lap prior to the start, so they are cutting it fine. They are running the KERS system at the moment, but it sounded to me like it was not working for Vettel in first practice. Whatever was wrong he was not running well and finished well down the order. It is reported that they will make a decision to run it or not, but by their own admission they need it here. A chink in the armor? The others can only hope as McLaren think Red Bull are still keeping half a second up their sleeve.

We have Indycar and Grand-Am at Barber Motorsport Park this weekend. Another Chip Ganassi benefit?

Well that was fun, not. Web site and blog hacked this morning so late in writing this up.

We keep hearing that the DRS wing is going to make overtaking easy in Malaysia, but it is raining. Even if intermediates are on the car the wing cannot be moved, so it has to be totally dry for us to see if it works better than Oz. With less than twelve hours to first practice there is little to stir the emotions.

It seems the financial writers are no better at working out what is going on with F1 finances than I am. Pit Pass web site points out that the increase in the gross income does not jibe with the extra that should have been generated by the addition of Canada and Korea, so it would seem the race fees went down last year for all, or some. Pit Pass promises to give us the real story soon. There are stories that the teams are going to push for a 75% share of the gross in the next Concorde Agreement due shortly. That will put a dent into an already bad situation for CVC.

Jean Todt is cranking up the rhetoric. My friend Allen Petrich actually may have hit on what he is up to, make the F1 name so devalued that the 100 year rights are not worth having, and the FIA can start another Championship. Jean was talking down the audience numbers today, saying no one is watching because the tracks are boring and racing is bad. Pushing the 1.6 l Turbo down Bernie's throat could also be part of the plot. Does anyone know what GP2 is going to run when that happens? Is GP2 going to stick with the current engines, and will they be more powerful? I see that Renault has come out and said that they are increasing fuel usage due to the need to keep feeding the exhaust driven diffuser, about 10% more per race. That's really green isn't it?

Abu Dhabi is also looking to make changes to the track layout to help overtaking, and make it suitable for MotoGP. That is not going to be easy, but who do they have doing it? Why Mr. Tilke of course. Now, isn't it the definition of stupid to do something the same way twice and expect a different outcome?

The earning figures for Formula One are a big story today, with Bernie and the teams getting a raise in income. But there is something wrong here that I need an accountant to explain. My arithmetic obviously does not work in the world of accounting. The gross revenue for F1 is reported at $1.08 billion. The teams received $658m divided between them, not equally of course. Bernie received $7.9m and the net income is $296m. So $117m seems to be an operating cost. It is then reported that CVC LOST $660m! Now to my mind this means that CVC's costs are $296 + $660m, yes/no? Now CVC is a venture capital group, so apart from some management fees, this must be interest on the debt? Is that possible? No wonder they are looking to sell F1. What am I missing?

Joe Saward has a piece that goes a bit further into illuminating the ever shifting world of F1 management.

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

Formula One Administration has just transferred the F1 rights to a sister company Formula One World Championship, which is owned by Bernie's holding company SLEC which is in turn held by - well read it, I do not have enough space. Eventually we get to Delta Topco Ltd which has CVC and others as shareholders. You could lose a lot of money going through that lot, which is presumably the point. Other snippets is the sale of Instanbul Park between internal companies, presumably the F1 track the Turkish Gov't couldn't make pay, for $1, yes one dollar, an $11m write off apparently, but then how much did the Gov't write off? What does that say about the value of all those other monuments to ego and foolishness called F1 circuits?

In other news the Brazilian Federation has asked the FIA to look at the Interlagos track. Pedrosa has had successful surgery to unplug an artery trapped under the ironwork put in his shoulder after his accident last year. Let's hope he recovers quickly and is back in form to mix it with Stoner and Lorenzo. Jan Magnusson's son is setting fastest times in F3 testing, and Tony Fernandes is saying the name row is hurting sponsorship. I know how he feels, sponsors do not like uncertainty, especially over the person selling them something really has the right to it. I had exactly that problem with Eastern Creek when the owners were trying to sell sponsorship for the MotoGP that I was promoting. By the time that was sorted the time left for sponsors to exploit their investment was so short the value was greatly reduced.

Rain is forecast in Malaysia for the F1 race, fancy that, and in the monsoon season too. So, no movable wing and no more answers as to how it will improve overtaking, but there will probably be enough in the wet anyway.

Kimi had his first taste of NASCAR truck racing at a half mile oval and apparently did well. It was behind closed doors, so no real information is available, but it does not sound as if he stuck it in the wall.There are reports he is paying $100,000 a race for the ride, but I'm sure a sponsor will be all over that.

The final corner onto the straight at Interlagos, home of the Brazilian F1 GP, has always bothered me. The drivers cut across pit entry to get a faster line on basically a blind corner, and then the wall on the exit of the corner is right on the edge of the pavement. We have seen crashes here in F1, but not as many as you would expect, so it was one of those deals that seemed OK even if it looked bad. Well, I should remember my own words, if it looks bad it probably is. A motorcyclist died earlier this year and last weekend there was a fatality in a stock car race, the third fatality on four years, at a time when racing is generally being spared. There are now calls to modify the corner, but the problem is not easy to fix. The track is very close to the boundary of the property on the outside, and there is a steep drop off on the inside. The corner is great and re-profiling it would not be appreciated by the drivers, but nor would dying. Not a simple fix.

Jean Todt is flagging a revisit to the fees CVC, aka Bernie, paid for the hundred year commercial rights to F1. The fight over engines is apparently just an opening salvo, and Jean is giving notice he is standing for re-election. I bet Bernie will be working away behind the scenes to put his own man in there.

I love the fact that the Russina GP track is "well on track." Well the race is three years away so why shouldn't it be? The best bit is the "Final Feasibility Study" is going to the IOC. Last time I looked they did not run F1 races. And wouldn't you do the feasibility study before you signed a contract for millions of dollars to stage an F1 race? Silly me, this is just the study to make sure you can run a Winter Olympics and an F1 race within a few months of each other, not whether it is going to make money. We all know that answer don't we?

Has everyone caught up with what McLaren were trying to do with their trick exhaust before they gave up and copied Red Bull? "The Octopus" was what it was called. Instead of collecting the exhaust into two pipes from eight, it split them up and fed them into areas of the underfloor to provide the perfect exhaust diffuser. It was all a bit too complicated, and like a lot of complicated things in F1, they could not get it to work. Some of the best cars have been the simplest, the FW07 for instance. Don't think they have forgotten it though, so look for a revisit sometime this year.

Not much real news today, F1 gearing up for Malaysia which is supposed to provide lots of answers not provided in Australia. Is Red Bull sand bagging, do they really need KERS, will the rear wing really help overtaking. etc. We'll see. Virgin are saying Nick Worth "may have miscalculated." What like having a fuel tank too small to finish a race? What now? Downforce it seems. Perhaps if he had shoved it in a wind tunnel he may have found that out.

Nice piece in Racer Magazine the other day about the rear wing and overtaking, and the comment that it is still mainly to do with the track and track designers should go back to pencil and paper. I never left it.

Christian Horner was given a guided tour of the new Silverstone pit complex. Looks like a Tesco's supermarket to me but I guess the architect likes it. It "only" cost 27 million pounds! Some of us would like that budget to build a track. I know it was a while ago but Eastern Creek only cost $5m, and is still a nice building. Not sure what the exchange rate is, but my guess is we are talking about $40m for a 16,500 sq m building, that's around $240 per sq ft, very expensive where I am now, but maybe England is more expensive, or it is the gold fittings the F1 Teams want these days. Anyway, Silverstone had better sell a lot of corporate boxes to pay for that.

Nice to see Dale Earnhardt Jr. nearly winning a race, makes a nice change, and Montoya got up to finish fourth after a dreadful qualifying, not bad on a half mile oval and 43 cars.

There continues to be sceptics about the Austin track, particularly among the local media. A spokesman of course says it is all on course, and locals say that at least they have cleared the trees. I would hope so by now. I know earthmoving is in progress and to the layman it probably does not look like much, but they definitely have a credibility problem. Similar stories are around about India, which has a race in October. Chandook in an article in Autosport said there were 7000 workmen on site, but a recent visitor tells me he saw hardly anybody. You have to wonder what you would do with 7000 workmen? We only had 9000 on a $3.5 billion oil refinery that was being built in the same time frame.