Bob Barnard Track Engineering

So Bernie is going to let the Crown Prince decide whether it is safe to stage the Bahrain GP. At least he is not asking the opinion of a cameraman. Maybe Bernie is playing the politics and "letting" the Prince look like he made the decision, or hoping the Prince will cancel so he does not sue Bernie for breach of contract. There are suggestions that the teams have agreed not to go, but do not want to say so for fear of breaching the Concorde Agreement. Insurance is apparently a problem when there are travel advisories by the UK Foreign Office and other like bodies, so there is a "force majeur" situation there that could resolve the teams issue. It looks like a situation where no one wants to make a decision in case they are held in breach of contract, they are all dancing around the subject. The FIA, apart from a couple of inane comments a week ago, are missing in action on this one, afraid of upsetting the Arab voting block I guess. The only people with the courage of their convictions are the demonstrators.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the teams are continuing their Barcelona test. It is hard to read anything into fast laps, especially between different drivers on seperate days, but AT&T Williams keeps a running tally of all drivers on all days, which is interesting if nothing else. Check out http://www.attwilliams.com/test-timings

Rosberg is quickest overall with Vettel, Petrov, Alguersuari, Hamilton and Alonso and Barrichello within one second. Trulli in the Lotus is 2 plus seconds off the pace, which is much better than last year, with HRT and Virgin both over 3 seconds off thanks to Luizzi. Without Luizzi HRT would have been nowhere so they had better sign him up. The consensus is still Red Bull in race trim, but it is still any one's guess.

For those who like to see pairs of cars run around nose to tail for 4 or five hours then Daytona is on today, and yes they changed the rules again making the radiator slot bigger this time, just so they can last 500 miles? Can you imagine F1 doing this, or Le Mans? Just cut a bigger hole in a piece of tin plate boys, all sounds like amateur hour.

The photos of tanks in the streets of Bahrain reminded me of the Tiananmen Square situation, why do soldiers carry out such orders against unarmed civilians? Joe Saward rightly says that all the investment by Bahrain in presenting itself as a good place to visit and do business has probably been lost. Joe also suggests it is not a place that F1 should be associated with, but then again we just extended the deal with China, and I'm sure business will go on. Ever since the Munich Olympics the question of sport and politics has been raised. Still, if sponsors are concerned about their "green" image, I'm sure they are just as concerned about their humanitarian one. I've learned in my travels that there are very different cultures around the world, and we ignore them at our peril when doing business in them.

It seems Bernie's week is not getting any better with his comments on the situation in Bahrain being treated at best as "insensitive." One twitter post says Bernie thinks things are calmer now, (now they have shot a few people.) Not Bernie's words, but you see how they are being taken. He writes off the GP2 race as "only being the Asia series," "not terribly important." For the full piece go the ESPN F1, http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/41200.html

With some spare time yesterday I watched the twin 125's from Daytona, and have to announce that if that is what is going to happen on Sunday over 500 miles I will not be watching. A boring, bizarre pair of races. OK, the drivers are doing what they need to to be competitive, two cars hooked up are close to 10 mph faster than one, and by the second race they had worked out how to keep the car behind cool without having to waste time swapping over. So young Trevor Bayne pushed Jeff Gordon for the whole race. What was going to be his reward? They are not the same team? TV air time? Jeff Burton the winner of race two was pushed by Bowyer his Childress team mate for the whole race  so what did they do, flip a coin to see who pushed who? So what now NASCAR? The reduced restrictor plate slowed them down to about 199 mph, but we still have the strangest racing I've ever seen.

The debate over the Phillip Island MotoGP date rolls on, and the Daytona model might be a good one for Ron Walker to look at. Running the GP and World Superbike one month apart may not work, but one week could be built into a Daytona "Speedweek." If you are a fan of two and four wheels you could actually camp out at Daytona from the Rolex in late January through the Daytona 200 bike weeks in March, with non-stop action, and many do. Bike week is huge, with supercross and flat track events as well as a series of road races from pure amateur through to AMA, or is that DMG these days? In fact most motorcyclists come for the atmosphere and never go to the race. Still does not solve Ron's problem of having the F1 GP around the same time, but as I have said, that should be another "raceweek" with the Melbourne Cup in November.

It seems the Austin F1 track started again. Passers by the site report activity. What's that four starts now?

F1 testing resumes at Barcelona, which seems certain to host the final test as a result of the Bahrain problems. Track was wet this morning and no one is near last years times. Seems we are still not seeing any clear picture although the analysts are saying that from their long run times Red Bull is still the car to beat. Alonso in the Ferrari is topping the times at the moment, as they have done most days, so they must have a different strategy to these tests, or they are just quick. Hold the presses, Vettel just banged in fast time, over a second quicker than Alonso, just to show he can? Luizzi is down to test the HRT this weekend, good luck.

They say money makes the world go round, and it certainly makes the F1 world go round. In fact it has enough money to go around, it just isn't being split up correctly at present. The Resource Restriction Agreement, RRA, was raised again by Horner, and Whitmarsh continued in the  "we must be more relevant and not be seen as gas guzzlers" vein. F1 engines are I believe the most efficient engines around when you consider the power they produce from each gallon, and not just look at the miles per gallon. And there is that old "relevant" again. I guess the World Cup is relevant because most of us have kicked a ball around at some time in our life, but there again most of us have driven a car.

Bernie in responding to the Mayor of Melbourne about the value of an F1 GP compared it to the Olympics and the World Cup, and as far as the Olympics goes he is dead right. I was in Barcelona in 1992 and watched the Sydney Games lead up, and what a con job that is. Go and spend $6 bn  on facilities you did not need and will not use again for two weeks of exposure that no one cares about afterwards. At least you get an F1 race each year. The World Cup  has been different as the stadiums are used afterwards, although we now have South Africa looking for someone to run them and Qatar building stadiums in the desert.

Mark Hughes writing in Autosport the other week said "The sport can't afford to allow money to haemorrhage out." His article concentrated on the cost to promoters of staging a GP and where that money is going. The basic problem is it is not going back into the sport, it is going to a bunch of investors who have done no more than buy the rights. No one begrudged Bernie making a lot of money, he built this sport over many years and with his own abilities, and made others rich along the way, but the current situation with CVC is unsustainable. Hughes questions how many new countries there can be that will keep paying for GP's, and when the existing ones will get tired of it, like Malaysia and Bahrain. Now I met both those track chiefs in Cologne last year and they are already asking those questions. In Bahrain the Parliament is asking what they get for their money, and the circuit chief has a good answer. "What would it cost us to send everyone who watches the race a postcard?" It is a good argument, and has worked till now, but for how much longer? Malaysia says it has achieved it's objective of putting the country on the world stage, now they need the track to make money.

Joe Saward asks the question what these latest popular uprisings mean for F1? It is OK to go to all these exotic places with loads of money, but how safe and stable are they? Apparently there are stirrings in Bahrain today, and the F1 circus is headed there shortly. Would a new popular government be so keen to spend millions on a rich man's toy?

In a somewhat related article Sebastian Vettel is asking if the wheel has turned too far towards making F1 a "show" rather than a sport? Movable wings, KERS buttons, all to make the show better, but not for the driver. Alonso does not think it will be any easier to pass a car that is similar in speed, only those pesky back markers, and as I said a week or so ago, timing when to turn the wing back at the start of the braking zone is going to be a tricky problem, with some drivers missing it in early testing. So, we are spending loads of money on "widgets" that we are not sure even work. OK, KERS or some form of energy recovery system is going to be part of future automotive design, but that is being developed in spite of F1, not because of it. Porsche and Williams kept on developing their system when F1 had given it up.

So we have a situation where there is an incredible imbalance between the three parties to the deal. The promoters are not making money, the teams are getting some of the money coming into the sport, and a third party who are a silent partner effectively is creaming most of it off. Is this sustainable? Add to that the alienation of the traditional supporters of the sport by removing the opportunity to see it live and pandering to an elite who will lose interest and move on to the next big thing. Ask NASCAR how that is working for them. And while we are at it let's think about the "Car of Tomorrow" where the rules are so tightly proscribed it is almost spec racing. The teams spend enormous amounts on the smallest, silliest parts just to gain a thousand of a second, and as soon as they find it the part is banned. Does any of this sound "relevant" or "sustainable?" Oh yes, and now we are to have tires that wear out faster to make the "show" more fun, is that being efficient or relevant, or even safe? Interesting how the word "green" has disappeared from most of the motorsport vocabulary, apart from good old ALMS.

Just when I am saying that Williams should be worried about a lack of pace and reliability Barrichello goes and bangs in the quickest time of the test session. So we may as well wait till the first race to find out anything useful. Only 28 days. McLaren has everyone tricked about where the exhaust exits, the poor photographers are going mad trying to get a shot of it. Senna is in the Renault doing respectable times, but not matching Heidfeld and spinning it. Alonso and Massa have put the most miles on a car so the Ferrari looks pretty bullet proof, and close to the pace.

NASCAR's season kicked off last night with the Bud Shoot Out, and we saw in practice and the race what to expect from the repaved track. It has given a new dimension to team orders as cars ran in pairs like two love bugs tied together. If you don't know what love bugs are then you are lucky. They invade parts of the southern US and once mated cannot uncouple, so fly around like a "push me, pull you" until they die. Odd thing was that the motors did not die with the high revs and overheating from running so close, but it will be interesting how long they can sustain it in a 500 mile race. Makes for weird racing though, not sure that this was what NASCAR wanted. And who decides which driver is going to sacrifice himself to push his team mate over the line? Yes we've seen that before, but this was something different.

Christian Horner says that a budget cap is back on the table in F1. This time as a true overall amount by the sound of it, "We agree with restricting activity but don't cherry-pick ... let's do a transparent once-and-for-all deal with this," he said. I still cannot see the big teams cutting back to the level of the small teams, so the level is going to be set above what the small teams can raise anyway. Is this about "fairness?" Are we trying to "level the playing field?" I know the NFL does this stuff, not sure that it works though. This sport is about competition, both on and off the track. By all means stop teams spending more money than they have so they are stopped from going broke, but if they can raise it why should they not spend it? Perhaps there should be controls on excesses like the crazy "motor homes" that add nothing to the racing, but you could argue add to the spectacle. It would probably be cheaper if the teams funded the building of permanent structures like we see at overseas tracks, rather than pay for the cost of transport and erection, for what is now less than half the season anyway. Has anyone suggested Peugeot and Audi should be limited on what they spend on sporstcars?

Talking of fairness, Flavio's mate Pat Symonds is OK to be a consultant to Virgin. Now I am a consultant, and the only difference to being an employee is how you get paid and benefits, so let's cut the BS and hypocrisy.

The winter wait is over as F1 cars and MotoGP bikes hit the track today for their first test sessions. New cars and drivers, and some old faces for both, so it is going to be hard to make anything of this first test. Alonso and Vettel both near the top of the timesheet, with Hulkenburg in the Force India putting in some surprising times to be right there with them.  Just showing Williams they should not have let him go? The Lotus Renault and Williams have followed Red Bull with the pull rod rear suspension, but the biggest surprise so far is the lack of exhaust outlets on the Renault. They obviously have them, they just do not come out of the top or the sides, so must be underneath. This is the team that promised to be "at the brave end of brave," and it seems they are trying something here. At the end of last season, when we had the diffusers, most teams were feeding the exhaust gas out through them to increase downforce, so we can only presume they are doing something with this gas flow to generate downforce under the car. I read an article a few years ago that said an F1 engine is just a huge air pump, so the volume of gas coming out of the exhaust must be massive. In fact at 18,000 rpm that is 2.4 liters by 18,000, or if my math is correct, 43,200 liters per minute. Imagine if your local gas pump ran at that speed?

At the other end of the timesheet Rosberg is slowest, then Barrichello, with the HRT quicker, go figure.

Over in Sepang Casey Stoner is fastest on day one 0.4 seconds faster than Lorenzo. Did not take Casey long to adjust to the Honda. Now Valentino is down in 12th trying to find a position on the Ducati that is comfortable. Someone suggested he is still sand bagging, but team mate Hayden is behind him, and what use is it to sand bag? Can you really set up the bike if you are running around off the pace? And I would have thought that the "head games" would dictate that you would want to put your stamp of authority on from the beginning? Maybe someone out there can enlighten me? Good to see the Suzuki somewhere on the pace unlike last year, and Ben Spies going OK, but then so is Colin Edwards on the second team Yamaha.

In other news, Bernie is not talking about bribes on the advice of his lawyers, and Mark Webber says he is up for another crack at the title and I'm sure he is given how close he was last year. What Bernie is talking about is new races, "If we have some new races, some others will fall out — we don’t need Australia, for instance." Nice one Bernie.