Bob Barnard Track Engineering

That was the title of a piece on the ESPN blog about Bahrain a year or so ago, and we are hearing the same about Sochi. Has the FIA or FOM nothing to say? Not even "this is sport and not politics," as lame as that is? Ask Putin if the Olympics or F1 are about sport.

So India is not going to be on the 2015 calendar, what a surprise. They fell for that one. Now what are they going to do with that white elephant of a racetrack? The fate of Turkey, Valencia and Korea in recent times does not stop would be promoters it seems, with Azerbaijan getting a race according to Bernie. What with Long Beach still trying to decide, and a raft of others waiting in the wings there are plenty of people and countries who think they are smarter than Bernie and all the other F1 race promoters.

To assist those people I have recently connected with a group called Meet The Crowd, MTC, who specialise in strategies for would be and existing race promoters, and economic impact assessment, to assist with analysing whether to bid for an event or to renegotiate an existing contract. Our combined experience of organizing and promoting such events is now available. Check out their web site:

http://www.meetthecrowd.com/

In two wheeled matters it seems that Dorna is making up the rules as it goes along. Not a good basis for keeping teams in a sport. As soon as Ducati decided to do what Dorna wants and go to the open class they make up a new class for "works" teams in the open category, a class of one so far. Nice one. I bet Ducati are well pleased with that. Dorna has managed to upset both Ducati and the rest of the open teams, and is annoying Honda about them using the common ECU. If they keep this up they will be as popular as the FIM was in the early 90's.