Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Hands up all those who know what Boxing Day means, and it has nothing to do with two guys hitting each other. Sorry but there is no news, everyone resting up after Christmas I guess, so see you tomorrow.

To all my followers across the globe, thank you for your support and comments and I hope that you enjoy the season whatever your location and creed.

The best item I read today was the Red Bull Christmas Card showing Vettel with Santa Clause behind him in the sleigh, "Santa is faster than you. Please confirm you understand this message."

Have a safe and happy time!

Quiet day news wise, at least nothing worth my time talking about.

The biggest issue is in Australia at the moment, Bathurst NSW to be precise. Now if the world knows of Bathurst at all it is because of the V8Supercar race once a year, but along with Phillip Island it is an historic track in Australian motorsport on two and four wheels, with particular attachment to the motorcycle brigade. The track is public road and has never been "safe" even before the walls were put in principally for a round of the short lived World Touring Car Championship. The track is now only used for "tin tops" and there has been a push to build another circuit to allow other forms of sport, especially the motorcycles to compete there again. The track is owned by the Bathurst Council being public roads, but I believe parts of the infrastructure have been owned by the ARDC who ran the 1000 km race for a long time. So what does the Government do? I presume it was the NSW Gov't, still trying to find that out, commissioned the Homebush Bay Motor Racing Authority, HBMRA, the body they set up to manage the V8Supercar event at the old Olympic site, to do a study. They in turn commissioned a consultant, and guess what, it is too expensive and cannot make enough to justify that cost. How is HBMRA funded you ask? And does it make money? No it is justified on the basis of economic benefit, but it seems poor old Bathurst must pay for itself, and the $57m in infrastructure improvements! What are we building? Phillip Island, home of the motorcycle GP has no infrastructure but manages somehow. When I proposed rebuilding it the traffic guys said the two lane bridge will not cope. I doubt that they have widened it in the last twenty years, and still they come. This is a classic political manoeuvre. ask the question the right way and you get the answer you want, look at the referendum on the Queen. Who wrote the brief for this study and what were they looking to build. And why ask the HBMRA to do it and not Bathurst Council? As the report correctly states this track would not get the F1 GP, and why would you want it at a loss of $50m a year,  and is unlikely to steal the MotoGP from the island, so it should be a safe, good standard national track, not some $47m monument to some politicians or consultants ego, and should be capable of running all year on a closed track so it does generate economic benefit and income. Not sure what things cost in Australia, but that could be built for around $12m here in the US, depending on earthworks, but my guess this is not going up the mountain.

Of course you could spend the money making the existing track safe, but I doubt the macho V8's would like that. The trick is always to make a track safe without gutting it of the character. I would recommend looking at Phillip Island, which I rebuilt for $5m including the pits and tunnel, and Road Atlanta here in the states.

Not me, Joe Saward. Joe has decided that as there is so little going on he may as well stop blogging for a couple of weeks. Well I am not stopping except for Christmas and New Year, but excuse me if the news is slim to none.

There are still important items like Petrov being confirmed at Renault, can't quite get used to Lotus Renault yet. That's a good move, and let's look forward to a really competitive car again from them, Kubica certainly deserves it.

It seems the residents in the area where the Rome F1 street race is supposed to be staged are not very happy with the prospect. A very good Italian friend of mine suggests there is more to this story than an F1 race, in fact it has little to do with an F1 race, so let's see how this plays out. Mr. Flammini is a close relation to Machiavelli.

The ACO has released next year's Technical Regulations with the all important "performance leveling" clause that lets them adjust the weight, restrictor size etc to keep the petrol cars within 2% of the times of the diesel cars. Now I know us fans want to see close racing, but this smacks of going down a spec racer path. Sports cars are seen as the last bastion of technical innovation now F1 is so restricted, and I would say many of its fans do not want this stifled. The promotion of new technologies is also the much sought after "green" racing, so why penalize Peugeot and Audi for introducing the diesels ? Let's encourage the petrol cars to improve. What's to stop the diesels from sandbagging in the early races to make sure they stay within two seconds, or just take their bat and ball home if they are not winning? They have invested a lot of money to get to this point, much more than Aston or the other petrol cars I would suggest. When Ford GTs and Ferraris were slugging it out in the sixties did anyone suggest it was unfair on the others? No we just enjoyed the fight. And when the Porsche 956 and 962 were the only car to have, did we complain? Le Mans is always about different classes of cars competing on the same track, so what is wrong with the diesel and petrol classes?

There is also the gentleman racer bit in the LMP2 class and two level GT class. OK to have two levels there I note. Gentlemen racers, i.e. amateurs, usually rich amateurs, have been part of Le Mans forever, think back to the "Bentley Boys." They pay for the cars that pros drive, and make for an interesting strategy mix. Now there are probably some that should not be out there, and that is why there are license standards. Now when I read the reported rules for GT Pro it says that the class is unrestricted whereas the Amateur class must have one gentleman driver and a year old car. So does unrestricted mean just that, it can also be a one year old car and a gentleman, or does it mean three pro drivers and a new car, and who is paying for it? And oh yes, we have performance leveling there as well. Why? It has been the closest fought class for many years now between makes, what do they think will change?

Ducati are concerned with Rossi's potential fitness problems during the testing for next season following his shoulder injury. The interview with the team principal seemed very weird to me, suggesting they would limit his miles on the machine. Surely that is the best way to improve his fitness?

D'Ambrosio does, or he will till he drives it. So another shoe has dropped and we are left with HRT and Force India, barring surprises. It seems D'Ambrosio, odd name for a Belgian, has won the ride on merit and not his wallet, and no Russian driver in sight.

So "Lotus Racing" has rebranded itself as "Team Lotus." All semantics to us plebs. I'd be just as supportive if they called it Air Asia. I know the brand is valuable, but not when we know it isn't really Lotus and it is being devalued all the time with the current squabble.

It seems that we are going even further back to the future with "tea tray" front wings from 2013, i.e. flat and short, not the convoluted things we see hanging out in the breeze waiting to be knocked off these days. This is something from the early eighties to go with the eighties turbo. Patrick Head and Rory Byrne were tasked with coming up with the regs for 2013, which will see even smaller rear wings and more downforce from under the car. Hang on, isn't that called "ground effects" and didn't we ban that as too dangerous? The worst part of this whole story, which I had to check the date on to see it was not April 1st, was the quote from Patrick.

"(In 2013) We are only going to have roughly 65 per cent of the amount of fuel and a (limited) fuel (flow) rate - that was a given," Head, engineering boss and co-owner at Williams, confirmed.

"We were just told ’That’s what it will be, you’ve got to come up with a car spec that is not going to be more than five seconds a lap slower than a current F1 car’.

So slower than a current GP2 car? What are we doing here? As Montezemolo said the other day "This is Formula One which should be the spearhead of technological development."

Murphy The Bear has a new posting which gets even more gloomy for ALMS and LMP1 cars every time. Why don't we just run the series for GT3 cars and enjoy it without having to worry about those other cars coming past and pushing them off the track? Murphy has a worst projection of two cars and a unlikely max of five. Why bother for other than the Sebring and Petit races?

If you think that the row between the Australian GP and the ASN, CAMS, is over, then watch this space. Last straw comes to mind for some people down under.