Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Great pictures and commentary on www.fromsportcom.com of the first free practice and qualifying. Pictures are Eurosport with very few and short ads, and commentary is out friends from Radio Le Mans. They have 24 hour coverage of the race itself so I know what I will be watching. Peugeot just on pole at the moment from the three Audis. Top seven all diesels and the best petrol is Pescarolo 5.5 secs off the pace of the slowest diesel. The ACO intent is for the petrol cars to be within 2%, which would be around 4 secs, so getting closer, and they have some breaks which in the race may even things out. Lets hope so. Still, the times between the diesels is close and we should have another cracking battle.

Some big accidents, especially the Straka which leads the LMP2 class again this year, but all are repaired I believe. BMW's leading the way in the GT Class which is a big improvement on last year. Fisichella stuck in a quick lap at the end in the Ferrari 458 to split them, and then the Corvettes who had a bit of a fraught session. Let's hope all their problems are sorted.

Meanwhile, back in Bahrain the head of the Tourism Board called Bernie a hypocrite for changing his stance on staging the race this year. That's pretty rich for a group who say all is peaceful while they put 47 medical staff on trial in a secret court behind closed doors. Adam Parr, CEO of Williams, has come out and said we cannot change India's date, all his neighbors have booked their holidays. Nice way of saying we are not going to Bahrain without actually having to say it, no guts. So, if the FIA needs to 100% agreement of the teams to change the calendar then they are now officially in trouble.

Joe Saward can always be relied upon for some  good sensible comments and today is no exception. Read his two pieces about the situation:

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

Following on from yesterday's comments on Audi being involved with the design of the 2013 F1 engine, their racing Chief, Dr. Ulrich, came out and said "There's a very good reason why we are not in F1, there's no relevance to the road. At Le Mans, one of our cars will cover 325 miles more than an F1 car will cover in an entire season, our average speed including pitstops will be 20mph higher than an F1 car and we will use 42% less fuel." And a lot less tires! They can run two or three stints of 45 minutes or more on a set, so a GP's worth. Now some of this is down to the characteristics of the Le Mans circuit, but can you imagine if they stopped every thirty miles or so for a set of treads? Anyway, it goes back to the question why Audi was involved in the F1 engine in the first place?

The blood has started to flow over at Ferrari after Sunday's disaster of being lapped with Aldo Costa "stepping down" as the Technical Director in favor of Pat Fry. Several other changes were made, but Domenicali is safe, for now.

Back at Indy it seems qualifying did not end Sunday. As Paul Tracy said, Monday is now Check Book Bump Day with Andretti buying a seat at Foyt's team for their man Hunter-Ray. So we sat and watched all the pathos of Ryan and his girlfriend after he was bumped, and the anguish on Michael's face, only to have him buy their way in. No wonder he looked anguished, he was calculating what it was going to cost him. Perhaps there is a whole new business here, get qualified for a race and then sell the place, or just hire yourself out. What would pole in F1 be worth do you think? What sort of joke is this? What do the fans who actually sat through the day, rain and all, think? A very sad day for a famous race. We know drivers have been buying their seat in Indycar, under whatever name, and some do in F1, but buying a starting spot?

Talking of buying a starting spot, Kimi is confirmed on the entry list for this weeks Nationwide race in Joe Nemechek's team. And yes I can be two-faced and say this once is OK.

Just as I thought, there is a Nationwide Toyota waiting for Kimi to drive this weekend at Charlotte. It appeared in Joe Nemechek's shop and will be entered by his team, Kyle Bush does not have a Nationwide team, yet. Kimi has a guaranteed start due to Joe's owner's points in the series. Is he going to test beforehand? I would think the Nationwide car would be easier to adjust to than the truck, but what do I know, that's where they all seem to start. This is a marketing dream for NASCAR, even bigger than Montoya.  Perhaps I'll watch the Nationwide race this week?

Renault are saying it is unlikely that Kubica will return this year, which is no real surprise. Let us just hope he can return at all.

Bernie gave the Crown Prince of Bahrain an audience at Barcelona.  How important must Bernie feel when he has Royalty coming to see him? Of course the Prince came to give Bernie the message that it is safe to come back, but I doubt the teams feel that way. Ross Brawn is against the extension of the season, says his guys need a break. Nice way to not go.

Pirelli media celebrity, Paul Hembery, announced himself happy that the hard compounds did not wear. Did not grip either according to the drivers, especially Alonso. Steel tires would probably not wear either, and we would not have the "marbles" that were still very evident at Barcelona.

No protests after the race, but Colin Kolles of HRT is telling the teams they need to fix their engine mapping or he will protest in Monaco. Their supplier, Cosworth, have joined the "do not change the engine in 2013" brigade as they fear their teams cannot afford it. My buddy Peter Geran pointed out that in the Motor Sport article I quoted the other day the Audi engine chief had been in on the FIA panel advising on the new engine. As Peter says, how does someone who has no investment in the sport get to help make decisions? But from my experience that is how most of these decisions are made. When I was running Moto GP's the Road Race Commission was comprised of FIM elected members not one of whom had a dime invested. Still, you can see where Todt was going with this, let's get some more manufacturers involved, after Max's reign where he tried to get rid of them. There could also be a darker motive as Allen Petrich has hinted at. Todt said the other day that the 4 cylinder is going to be the engine of the FIA's top series, and if they do not like it they can go and race in another series. Is this how he breaks the 100 year deal with Bernie?

I watched a little of Indy bump day, thanks to the rain that's all there was. Can't say I found it very exciting, and judging by the lack of spectators not many others do either. The most interesting thing all day was the look on Michale Andretti's face when Marco bumped his other team car right at the end. "How do I explain that to the sponsor" was the look I saw.

Is anyone else tired of this nonsense with bad tyres? One of Bernie's best ideas was the three stage knockout qualifying to make teams put cars on track. Now we have the situation where they are once again sitting in the garage during qualifying to save tires. Of course it is made worse by the domination of Red Bull and to some extent McLaren. Why not just give them one or two more sets? In the race they are still going to have to use both compounds, and gamble on a two or three or four stop race. Better still make the tires better. As the editorial in this month's Motor Sport says the current gimmicks are a band aid to cover up the basic problem with the current car specs.

Then we have Lewis Hamilton admitting in the post qualifying press conference that he will not be able to challenge the Red Bulls tomorrow as he has to look after his tyres! Great racing this is. We also have Vettel admitting his KERS did not work in Q2 & 3. Good, can you imagine how much more than the one second advantage they would have? Let's hope Mark can put on a show, otherwise it will not matter how many DRS, KERS and bad tires there are, it will be very boring.

You all know I am no fan of KERS and the whole green racing deal on the basis that racing is about efficiency anyway. It is nice to read the piece, again in Motor Sport, about the new Audi for Le Mans. Dr. Baretzky, the Audi engine Chief, puts it nicely. Talking of hybrids and why they are not planning to use it he said that at the moment the extra weight on the car would need more fuel to propel it than you are gaining from its use. "The system should pay for itself...Motor Sport should be about the truth: the more efficient, quicker, better car should win, and the rules should be made according to that. The ACO says we have to encourage this technology. Why? If this technology is a better solution, it will come. If we have to encourage it and it turns out to be the wrong route, it is a waste of energy and time." Here here.

The FIA has announced that DRS is so successful we are to get two zones of it at Canada and Valencia! Personally I never saw that Canada has a problem with overtaking with Turn 1, the hairpin and the last corner being full of action in the past. Valencia now is different, it needs all the help it can get. They have also decreed that the DRS cannot be used in the tunnel at Monaco, or Eau Rouge.  It would be a very brave, and stupid, man to try it through Eau Rouge. The tunnel might entice some to try. Why all this manipulation of where and when? If it is so good then rely on the drivers common sense and self preservation to decide when to use it. Or are we protecting the drivers from themselves?

So who watched Kimi at Charlotte? I did, and was very impressed. He kept it going in the right direction unlike some of the much more experienced drivers out there, including his team owner Kyle Bush. Kimi never saw Charlotte until Friday morning and raced there that night! He certainly was not intimidated by running in close company, and the other drivers did not seem to have a problem racing around him. Great job, not that I expected anything less. So now what, Nationwide?

Back at Barcelona we potentially have the situation where the Cosworth teams could protest the engine mapped exhaust blown diffusers. This the off and then on again ruling by the FIA, which leaves the door open as they did not say its use was legal, just that the teams had a stay of when they needed to undo it. That would be a nice mess at the end of the race wouldn't it?

As reported a few months ago the success of the greens in recent German elections has made the support for the German GP unlikely to continue past 2015, two more races at the Nurburgring as it alternates with Hockenheim so that track only loses half as much!

Not good. That is the prognosis of Murphy The Bear, and he should know. His latest blog is as always to the point, but depressing for North American fans:

http://murphythebear.com/blog/index.php/2011/05/19/190-assessing-alms-and-grand-am-prospects/#more-1089

It seems the ALMS "Game Changing" TV package is so good their chief of TV got fired for it. It is also a sad day for racing when Audi can sell more cars from plain old ads than from winning on a race track. "Win on Sunday, No One Notices Monday?"

The blog also picks up on the plight of NASCAR. As my readers will know I have been saying this is not just an "economy thing," but a lot of people do not want to believe it. On a similar note, I suggested that the VIR Grand-Am race could have been a fix for the Ganassi team to get beaten, but even I did not realize that the winning car is  associated with Daytona, so the money went from one pocket to another as Murphy points out.

The Bahrain saga continues, with the June 3 deadline being real now apparently. The latest is for India to move to December and give Bahrain it's October date. Is this more because India will not be finished by October?

I had to laugh when I read that Bathurst is "secure" until 2034! Who knows what we will be racing by then, and whatever it is Bathurst will always be secure. V8Supercars needs Bathurst more than Bathurst needs them, so who is securing who?