Bob Barnard Track Engineering

In a masterful English understatement David Hobbs call the pit exit in Korea "unfortunate." Hamilton almost showed us what will happen at pit in if they try and keep their speed high to avoid being rear ended. Apparently the new curb at Turn 16 is coming up already, and the track is getting bumpier. And tomorrow it is going to rain. I am tired of people, journalists mainly, saying it is going to be exciting. I repeat we are trying to run a professional sport here, not a circus or a lottery. I am surprised that no one has hit a wall yet, but that tells me however hard it looks like they are trying, the drivers are not at ten tenths.

I am sure you are getting tired of me harping on about Korea, but it just annoys me so much as a professional designer and builder to see something like this being built. They spent $250m on this, and as I have said before, it costs no more to build it correctly as to do it wrong. Let's hope tomorrow does not see a big accident, but I fear Turn 1 at the start is not going to be pretty.

It is a testament to the top teams that they can come to a new track and all be so close on set up. The simulation though predicted a 1 min 44 sec lap, so that did not work too well.

I think it is time for me to retire if Korea is an example of what a modern race track needs to be. Mark Webber says "We are really clutching at straws to be able to try and criticise anyone here." Personally I cannot find anything I actually like about the track from either a racing or safety point of view. It is as I have said before, if they think the track owners know nothing but somehow manage to get it finished, and that is relative, and get it half right, then they have done a "remarkable job." If they think you should know better then nothing is good enough. Just when was it OK not to have a verge between the white line and the wall? Some people compared it to Valencia, but it is far worse.

I enjoyed the streaming web based coverage of first practice, no commentary and we could hear the cars. Picture quality was great too. Not that the SPEED boys did a bad job on the second practice, for once it was not all gushing over a new track. I thought their comments were spot on about that last corner complex and pit entry, not sure about pit out either, and all those corners just running together. We saw in practice how impossible it is to overtake through those. And it is bumpy, despite the McLaren engineer's comments yesterday about how smooth it is. I guess if you are walking at 4 mph it looks OK.

The pavement has stayed down so full marks for that. I suspect the dust helped that, and the track surface is so hard, like we had in Adelaide, that the tires are not getting a grip and that is why we are seeing so much graining from tires sliding. When Keke Rosberg won the first race in Adelaide he had to keep stopping for tires as he was spinning the rear tires so much he was ripping them to shreds.

There is so much wrong here I do not even know where to start. It is like when I inspected Mosport after Don Panoz bought it. I believe that this is the worst Tilke design so far. Shouldn't he be getting better? I can only surmise that he was told to build a street circuit to suit the future city. So he designed around obstacles that are not there yet, instead of designing the track on a blank piece of ground, and then telling them to design the city around it. Perhaps he does not like to tell clients when they are wrong, but as a professional that is what we should do. Perhaps that is why he has all these projects and I do not. It is certainly why I do not work for Don any more, he got tired of me telling him what he could not do.

On a different note I read a comment from Ferrari that based on recent races they had done the right thing by backing Alonso over Massa. Sort of a self fulfilling prophesy don't you think?

And what about Lewis? Sits out most of practice and goes out and bangs in fastest lap.

It will be great to see some action on the Korean track after all the talk and surmising. There are still mixed messages coming out and you can read them on ESPN F1 and Autosport.com as easily as I can repeat them. There is a nice piece by a journalist on ESPN F1 about the trip and the "love" hotel, usually rented by the hour, but quite nice. The photos of the activity on the main straight remind me of a street race rather than a permanent circuit, but as long as it is ready tomorrow that's OK. I liked the quote for the organizers that "We can hardly expect to be perfect from the outset." Well yes you can actually if you know what you are doing or get the right people in to do it, which is what Tilke did in the end to get it finished. He is confident the track will stay down, and has obviously used the strongest, and most expensive, binder to lay it, but hey, it's only money.

Some of the walls look close to me and in odd spots. Liuzzi has commented on this and others say it looks like Valencia street circuit in places. As they are building a city in and around it then I guess that is what it is. It follows on Abu Dhabi where they said the moved the walls in closer, banking on the TecPro barriers to work. They may well do, but I think the drivers are a bit more cautious when the run off is less than they usually have, which results in a procession rather than a race. Did we see anyone overtake at Abu Dhabi last year?

Enough of the talk, SPEED Channel is streaming practice at 9pm EST in the US. You can work out what that is where you are, about nine hours from now. The BS stops when the rubber hits the road.

In other news, well not news, Kimi crashed again, and Hulkenburg will probably lose his ride despite a good season to Maldanado who has a wallet the size of Yamamoto's. The V8Supercars are due to race at Surfers Paradise as a replacement for IRL, shades of Long Beach when they dumped F1. V8's will be a better show, but we in the US will be unlikely to see it.

"Frankly, we have not been prepared well for our F1 debut," said Yoon Keun-Sang, the PR director for the race organiser. "If we host this year's event successfully, the situation will be far different next year," he is quoted by the Bangkok Post. How is that for an understatement? Conflicting first reports coming out of Korea, but it seems the site is more like a construction site than the site of a GP. Still some people seem happy. McLaren's Phil Prew made these comments on Autosport's web site.

"I actually walked the circuit this morning with the other engineers, and I have to say I was fairly impressed with what I saw. The track itself, the kerbs and run-off and all of that sort of thing looked pretty good. The track surface itself, yes it has been recently laid, and it is a bit of an unknown. I don't think it looked too bad in terms of it wasn't particularly greasy under-foot and it looked - from what you can tell - smooth, well-laid and consistent all the way around the circuit.

In terms of how it develops and how the tyres interact with it, it is going to be guesswork. It's going to evolve, I expect, very quickly through the first session and then I think we should expect it to continue to improve all the way through qualifying and then the race."

That seems to be the key to the weekend, and there is rain forecast to make it even more of a lottery. How much will the track improve, will it stay down, and how do you set the car up, especially when it goes into parc ferme conditions. It will be a gamble, and Herman Tilke likes it like that. Again talking to Autosport, Tilke said he actually thinks that it will be a benefit for F1 fans in helping improve the show because it will be so slippery. Well why don't we make all tracks slippery then? How about ice racing, oh sorry, we already do that, but it does not seem to get much TV coverage. We are not running a circus here.

Anyway, we do not have long to wait to find out the answers to all the questions. One quote I liked was that some teams are looking forward to getting out of Korea already and heading to Brazil. Now no offense Felipe and Rubens, but I've been to Brazil, and I have never looked forward to going back.

In an interview with England's Guardian newspaper Bernie was in great form. "I don't think democracy is the way to run anything." That goes without saying, you just have to look at how he has run F1 these last thirty years or more. Speaking about job satisfaction he said,"You look back at the end of the year and you see what you've achieved by working out how much money the company has made. That's it." That tells us all we need to know. No sentimentality about famous old tracks being lost, and unapologetic about the spate of "cookie cutter" tracks replacing them, blaming it on the need for track safety. In my mind safety and a great track are not mutually exclusive, on the contrary, a safe track allows drivers or riders to take chances they would not normally take if they thought the track unsafe. I think Phillip Island is a great example of this. Anyway, I do not believe Bernie is quite as hard bitten as he likes to make out. Don't get me wrong he loves winning the deal, but he started as a racer don't forget, then a driver manager and team owner. He does love the sport, just loves the deal more. Asked about retirement he repeated what he has said before that basically they will carry him out of the office in his coffin, and said they needed a car dealer to replace him. Not quite sure if Flavio Briatore was a car dealer, but he was a wheeler and dealer so I guess that counts. One very true statement Bernie makes is in respect of the money wasted by Governments on the Olympics compared to investing in say Silverstone. "The worst thing is that they have wasted a fortune on the Olympics which will come and go, and be forgotten in a few weeks, when they could have supported Silverstone and made sure the British grand prix is there forever. The only good thing about the Olympics is the opening and closing ceremony. They do a lovely showbiz job. Otherwise, it's complete nonsense." Well said Bernie.

I read yesterday that Korea is spreading cement dust on the asphalt to soak up the oil seeping out of it because it is so freshly laid. That's high tech right there, you want to be the first driver to find that slick spot.

There is a lot of comment about the bad weather at Phillip Island last weekend and why can't they pave the parking or move the race to earlier in the year? Paving the parking would be extremely expensive for just that race, even if the farmers would sell the land and the Council would let you. I always planned that the race would be one of the first of the season so even though the weather can still be iffy in the fall at least the ground would have dried out over the summer. As it is in September it has rained all winter on volcanic soils, not a good mix. The argument is that the F1 race is early in the year and you do not want to clash. Well it wasn't when it ran in Adelaide, and only runs early in Melbourne to avoid the Melbourne Cup horse race, Australia's Derby, which is run the first Tuesday in November if I remember correctly. So what if the GP  ran that weekend prior? What an experience, you don't think the sum of the two is bigger than the parts in terms of a tourist draw?