Bob Barnard Track Engineering

I am surprised at the lack of response to yesterday's blog, but for you guys in Australia the Mercedes World Drive is headed your way after the US leg, so check the map above.

Bernie's World Tour continues to grow would be stop overs with Croatia the latest to throw it's hat in the ring with a $420m track, to be built by Mr. Tilke of course. Do these would be track owners not read comments like Sir Jackie Stewart and now Martin Whitmarsh on Herman's tracks?  And these guys must know something about high finance that I do not. How do you invest $420m in a venture where the main event loses money every year? Even as a promotion surely you can find something a bit cheaper to put on, or just buy loads of air time. So who is going off the calendar to make way for this one? In a twist, there are protests in the streets of the capital this last weekend, so now we are having protests before we even get a race to cancel.

Martin Whitmarsh was also asked about McLaren building its own F1 engine, and he declined to rule it out. I would have thought that this was a totally logical step now they have divested the Mercedes ownership and started building its own road supercar and engine. McLaren clearly want to take on Ferrari, so their own engine is a necessary step.

There is an interesting news item on Autosport today about the winner of this year's USTCC getting a drive in the WTCC. Now I have not heard of a US Touring Car Championship since the year I first got to the US in 1997, so they have been keeping this a very big secret. Why would the WTCC team up with this unknown series and not the SCCA Pro Racing World Challenge, or either of the GT series which do after all run BMW's and other "Touring Cars?"

F1 testing resumes tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on which team you are in, and supposedly we will get some better picture of how the Pirelli's will perform. Hamilton is the latest driver to come out about how they "will make F1 slow." Melbourne will be interesting, or maybe not?

I had an interesting afternoon yesterday visiting one of the world's best kept secrets,"The Mercedes F_Cell Round the World Drive" on its Phoenix stop over. If an old friend had not been part of the team I would not know it was going on, as I am sure most of you aren't. Regular readers will know that I have long championed hydrogen as the real alternative fuel of the future, it has just taken some time to get it going. Mercedes are driving four fuel cell cars around the world with selected journalists at the wheel, to prove the technology has arrived to a point that it is safe and reliable, much as manufacturers did with the Le Mans 24 hours 90 years ago.

I could not believe the lack of media coverage, the only place to see this is on Mercedes web site,

http://www.emercedesbenz.com/autos/mercedes-benz/b-class/mercedes-benz-f-cell-world-drive-kicks-off-its-north-american-tour/

Mercedes have arranged their own refueling through Linde as they need to refuel midday, the cars having a normal gasoline engine range, and there is not going to be hydrogen in the middle of the US at the moment. There is refueling in Phoenix though and California has twenty hydrogen stations already.



The beauty of hydrogen is it really is zero emissions, the tail pipe releases water vapor, so when the generation of hydrogen is by way of renewable sources, like Iceland with geothermal energy, then it is the perfect closed cycle. And no batteries to go and find lithium for and to dispose of afterwards.



So Lord Peter Drayson, when are you going to get real and race a hydrogen powered car?

For a fast sport it is a very slow news day. In the absence of news I will share with you a response from Olaf about the problems of sprinklers:

"- ideally you'd want the water to be applied low at the track surface, so you'd need closely spaced sprinklers with robust heads (embedded in little concrete pits). Never mind the pipe and control infrastructure needed.
- pipe size and amount of water would to a degree depend on how much of an area you want to flood (or wet), and by how much. at the same time weather conditions would also have an impact - you would need more water during summer (when the supply may be low), and possibly less in spring / autumn.
- i suspect you would be talking about quite a large volume of water - easily a few hundred cubic metres. question is where do you get the water from, and where do you store it? could you use the rainwater attenuation system nowadays part of most schemes? something used for test tracks are self-contained systems, whereby the track run-off gets collected in a drainage system and then routed through the storage tank. though you'd always have losses, and would need to top up the system very regularly. not very cost-conscious or sustainable.
- you'd have to probably change the approach to the engineering design - usually we except that under heavy rainfall track operations get suspended for a while, until water clears. with this proposal your drainage collection system would have to work very well at all times, with no standing water, no soil etc being washed onto the track (an issue with sprinklers if slightly misaligned), no sheet flows across the track. again, costs would increase.
- i'd also be concerned about maintenance. if you applied this system say in the middle east, all their drainage infrastructure and operations would have to change - usually everything is just a sand trap after a short while... similar issues apply elsewhere (for instance need to bleed the supply system prior to winter and frost damage).

The whole thing would be rather expensive, and inevitably would also throw up safety questions."

And guess who would be paying, the poor old promoter just like the lights. And placing the sprinkler head so it is not going to be hit would be difficult, I'd be interested to see how tracks have done it so far.

The season has not started yet and the amount of words being written about Pirelli tires rather than the cars is not right. When you have a single tire supplier the tires should not be a factor, but it seems that this year they will be the main factor. There is a great piece on pitpass website about the huge balls of rubber that are accumulating on the track, and being thrown over the debris fence! Catch one of these in your helmet and you will know it.

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=43040

Now Martin Whitmarsh has come out and said the drivers should shut up about it, that being the tire supplier is a "thankless task," but Pirelli wanted the task. Whitmarsh is one of those who go on about the sport being relevant and more environmentally friendly. What's environmentally friendly about using masses of tires every race, when we know the tire manufacturer could make one that lasts the weekend? And what is relevant about a tire that lasts 40 or 50 kilometers? Us average motorists would like to see 40,000 k out of a set thank you, that is what is "relevant." If you need pit stops to make the racing exciting, as NASCAR seems to do, then there is something wrong with your sport.

That goes right along with the sprinkler idea. London's Daily Telegraph offers up even more ideas for Bernie to spice things up.

There is a great saying in Australia to describe a stupid situation, "All we need is a tent and elephants and we would have a circus." This is what F1 has been called, and is well on the way to being a real one. More "F1 Figures" have come out in favor of sprinklers. Let's think about this. The reason rain effected races are interesting is usually the unpredictability of it, look at Spa. Now if it becomes "predictable" that Bernie is going to turn the taps on sometime in the race do you not think the geniuses in F1 teams will work out how to make it all "predictable" again?

Good old Luca di Montezemolo has sounded off again about the current F1 rules. Steering wheels like "martians." You have to love him. He gets my vote for being the next Ringmaster of the circus, but he probably has his eyes on a bigger tent.

Not to be outdone Indycar has some ideas of its own to spice up the show. Guest drivers for the last race did not even rate a comment from me, but I have seen what happens when you start distorting races with offers of large amounts of prize money and it is usually a demolition derby. You had better hope the Championship is not being decided at that race with a bunch of ring-ins out there having their own race and "devil take the hindmost." Now we are to split the Texas race into two races for double the fun. We all know people watch the start and the finish, so now they have to tune in twice. But just for real fun let's just pick grid spots out of a hat. Why waste time on qualifying at any races? It would be greener, especially if you used recycled paper.

Very good news on Sir Jackie, we need his common sense around for a while yet.