Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Joe Saward followed up where I left off on Bernie's idea of purposely engineering wet races. Encouraged no doubt by Pirelli coming out in support of the idea Joe has really said it all in today's blog on how desperate F1 is becoming.

Check it out at http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

I said Bernie should retire gracefully but Joe suggests he goes off to Las Vegas instead, but he tried that once didn't he? I really like the Ferrari tank though.

Mid-Ohio has finally been sold to Kim Green and his partner Kevin Savoree. Kim is an Australian who has lived and raced here in the US for a long time, most recently partnering with Michael Andretti in the IRL team and race promotions like St Petersburg until Michael kept the team and Kim took the promotions arm. I wish him luck with it, it is a tough sell making money from spectator races as we just have seen at Jerez.

Times are tough for other promoters too, with Korea severely reducing ticket prices to try and fill seats, and Singapore giving large early purchase discounts. Now the prices we are talking about would make the average NASCAR fan have a heart attack, $200 plus, with the most expensive $400. Korea is offering a 50% discount if you buy your ticket this month. Now they are saying they had 80,000 there last year, so doing the math at say an average of $300 a ticket that is $24m. Now Bernie's fee is north of $30m, probably more like $40m, so how do you make money on that? Halving the price even if it doubles the attendance only gets you back to square one. And Austin is going to make money?

Sad to hear that Aston Martin is not going to debut it's LMP1 car at Sebring this year. With Audi saving their new car for later that means Peugeot should have it all their own way, in theory.

Sorry to hear about Sir Jackie Stewart's health problems and hope he makes a full recovery.

And sorry the blog is late. I had an appointment this morning to go and look at some land for a track. Interesting and has potential, so we will see what sort of deal there is to be done.

That's Bernie's latest idea to spice up the show. You never know if he is winding us up or is serious, but I fear he is serious most times these days. So, short cuts at corners did not get a vote and he does not think the wings will work, so let's install sprinklers at tracks and then turn them on with a couple of minutes notice, just for a little while to mix up the order. Why stop there? Why not just turn them on at one corner unannounced, that would really make it interesting. Better still, we could make some money with those viewer texts to choose when to do it or where. This really is getting to be a circus and it is time the Ringmaster retired gracefully.

It seems we do not need rain to spice up the show, the top drivers are now all saying it will be a circus thanks to Pirelli anyway. Three or four stops for tires and a huge drop off in performance that even Jenson Button will not be able to manage. If you read about the World Supersport race at Phillip Island you will know that the Pirelli's had punctures, almost unheard of in motorcycle racing these days.

Bernie is also saying that the Bahrain race needs to be rescheduled before the first GP which is just 25 days away. Mid-season break seems to be favorite, but who's to say the problems will go away by then?

Proton, the parent of the Lotus Cars Group, the sponsors of Renault, are being subject to doubts over the foray by their sibling into F1. Their share price is dropping and the forecast profitability of the Lotus Group questioned. What happens if they lose the court case against the "other" Lotus. All of this smacks of Dany Bahar's ego.

Following my comments on the "old guys" winning at Phillip Island, and my other recent comments on the lack of new blood in motorcycle racing in particular, I was struck by the difference over at NASCAR. Here we have a 20 year old rookie winning the biggest race of the year at his first try. Now NASCAR still has its fair share of "good ol' boys," Mark Martin and Bill Elliott to name two, but if you look at the field at Phoenix there is more younger than 30 than over it I would guess. Brad Keselowski. Joey Logano, Regan Smith, are just three names that come to mind as new boys. These guys not only get into the Sprint Cup they also get good rides and are able to stay there, unlike F1 which seems to suck in new boys with a bag of money and spit them out for the next one.

So why is this? NASCAR has a terrific farm system of short track races all over the US, and then the top tiers of ARCA, Trucks and Nationwide to bring these guys through. Obviously there are many more than those we see make it, but the chance is there, and you do not see the young guys buying their ride, they earn it. This is a very American thing with the NFL, NBA and NHL relying on the colleges as their farm system, and Baseball using the colleges and then their minor leagues to develop talent. F1 relies upon the myriad of open wheel formula to sort out the best, but at what cost to the drivers? At every step the driver has to bring money and it is ridiculous what GP2 costs. Even when they get there a competitive seat is not guaranteed and your time in F1 very short lived if you do not get in to a top team.

So what is MotoGP doing to nurture new talent? Nothing that I can see. Moto2 is expensive for a young rider, and like F1, there is no guarantee you can make the step up. OK, NASCAR is in one country and has control over much of the racing, and MotoGP is international, but through the FIM and the members they have the ability to do something. When I worked for Kenny in Spain we worked with the Spanish Motorcycle Authority, a promoter and the manufacturers to put together a "finishing school" to identify fresh blood, and it did for a while. So it can be done, just needs some foresight and commitment, not just taking from the sport. What is Dorna going to do when Rossi retires?

Nice article on Crash.net about Sir Jackie Stewart's views on the lack of overtaking and Mr. Tilke's tracks.

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/167041/1/stewart_tilke_tracks_to_blame_for_lack_of_passing.html

Joe Saward also has a piece about the Serious Fraud Squad, is there a "not very serious" Fraud Squad? Apparently A1GP is being investigated for losing all that money. It never made sense and the revival as A10GP does not either. There are always people who will look at what Bernie has and think they can do the same.

On a similar note the Two Wheels web site is reporting that the Jerez track is in trouble.

http://www.twowheelsblog.com/post/6050/jerez-de-la-frontera-circuit-may-shut-down-motogp-round-risk?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+twowheelsblog%2Fcom+%28twowheelsblog%29

The model is broken, tracks can no longer make money staging spectator races, even if a huge crowd turns up like they do in Jerez for the MotoGP. Unless a Government is paying do not even start down this road.

Checked out actually. That is what Carlos Checa did in both WSBK races at Phillip Island today, with Biaggi settling for second in both in front of Haslam Jr. and Melandri in race 1 & 2 respectively. Greg Sarni scolded me for calling Checa and Biaggi geriatrics, and as he rightly points out they can still beat the youngsters, so why should they stop? It is a sad reflection on the state of racing that they can still beat the field. Where are all the next great riders?

There were a few in the race of course, just not at the sharp end other than Haslam. Australian Mark Aitchison started his first WSBK event after limited time on the bike, and as Kenny would tell him, stayed on it and improved. In race one he was over a minute behind the winner, but halved that deficit in the second. Now there may be reasons for that but as we in the US do not actually get to watch the races until this afternoon I guess I will have to wait and see.

Not much else going on. More quotes from Bernie's story, "No Angel," about Alonso who sounds like no angel himself, but most of us knew that already. Not to be outdone by Jenson running a V8Supercar around Bathurst it now seems Lewis is going to swap cars with Tony Stewart at Watkins Glen later this year. Has Lewis ever driven something with a roof?

Amazingly most of the motorsport web sites have nothing new to say this morning, so little, or "petit" to stir my comments. There does seem to be a lot of interest though in the number of cars likely to enter this year's Petit Le Mans, and the tracks' ability to handle them. Check out Murphy The Bear's very latest offering:

http://murphythebear.com/blog/index.php/2011/02/26/185-le-grand-petit-how-many-at-road-atlanta/#more-1019

When I was there running Road Atlanta for the first one we were just happy to have entries without worrying about if we had too many. I recall one SCCA event that was delayed in starting and they threw out most of the entries in one session of practice, over eighty cars from memory. Bit of a nightmare and would not want to do that again, but amateur drivers going in all directions. No red flags though.

No such problems for motorcycle racing these days, lucky to have a field. Down at the Island Carlos Checa preserved his pole position for the Superbike Round by winning the "superpole" shootout by a slim margin over his arch geriatric rival Max Biaggi. So the race is anybodies it seems, should be worth a look.

See you all tomorrow.