Bob Barnard Track Engineering

With the raft of ideas coming out of the FIA lately you would think someone has been at the cool-aid. Or maybe Bernie thinks if he makes it more like NASCAR the Americans will understand and like F1. Driver's permanent numbers, compulsory pit stops, what next, yellows for debris?

Bernie has spent a long time making F1 about teams and not drivers. In his words, "drivers are like busses, another one will be along soon." He has built the teams into valuable franchises with permanent numbers except for the current driver's championship. Now he wants to change all that and give drivers permanent numbers, as if we can read the car number anyway. Good for merchandise I guess, except under the current system they get to change numbers so we all need to buy new stuff don't we? 

Then there are compulsory pit stops. Either you want to spice up the racing with short life tires and different strategies or you don't. If you don't then just make tires last the whole race, or more, like the engines and gearboxes and really start getting serious about being green.

Let's not forget double points for the last race. How about a "Chase" where the points get reset so Vettel has to start even for the last four races. Oh yes, NASCAR thought this was a great idea. How to piss off fans without really trying.

This all smacks of that old trick of floating a lot of stupid ideas wherein is the one you really want so you trade those you don't want and seem like a good guy. What is it Bernie or the FIA want? How about a real budget cap? Good luck making that work. How about giving more money to the people who make the show, the teams, so they do not need pay drivers and make it a bit more equitable. Yes the best teams should be rewarded, but the teams at the back are never going to make it if starved of cash. I am not suggesting an NFL style inverse system where the worst team gets the best players. You would see teams trying to lose to get more money, but there should be a more reasonable basis than now. I for one can't wait to be shot of CVC, and not just for another robber baron. 

Now I know you were expecting a blog about the economy run that was the Malaysian F1 GP. Well, I think there is enough being said about all that, and I agree. But as Mark Webber said, if it were not for the fact that they have to drive to conserve tires, or in Mercedes case, fuel, then the situation with Vettel would not have arisen. 

As with last weekend, after being up half the night to watch the F1 race, and the aftermath, which was a lot more entertaining, and as it was raining and cold, no soccer thanks to the International break, I was forced to watch the Indycar race. Now I watch it for professional reasons, but it struck me sitting there, why does anyone else watch it? This is a serious question. It goes to the heart of the recent blogs on the death of spectator racing. I also watched the NASCAR race from Fontana which seemed to belie this as there were more spectators there than I have ever seen for a race at that track, notwithstanding that they had some seats covered up. Like most NASCAR races though you only needed to watch the finish.

Seriously though. We have a spec race series, with awful looking cars. We saw stupid driving, including an incident that this car design was supposed to stop, i.e. a car riding over the back of another. The drivers are either never-will-be's, or never were's, mostly from overseas, on a bad race track where overtaking is just about impossible, just ask Castroneves. We have interminable yellow flags, and the road sweepers must have done half the race distance. And they do not even have a female pit reporter! What are they thinking, at least some eye candy for the guys. And then there is Leigh Diffey, enough said.

If anyone can tell me why they watch, please comment.

Who else is tired of this whole Pirelli tire deal. Paul Hembery says that it is "just a phase" we hear it every year and by the eighth race the teams work it out. Eighth race, that is nearly half a season of a lottery! I logged in at 10 pm to Sky F1 on line to watch first practice from Sepang. What did I see? Nothing for 45 minutes, the teams were conserving tires. I bet the spectator, and yes I only saw one, and no wonder with nothing to watch, was as annoyed as I was, and I went to sleep. When teams do not have enough test time, according to them, why would they just sit in the garage. Oh yes, saving tires, great show that is.

Apparently the boys finally came out and proceeded to "melt" the tires in the heat and green track. One of the Team Principles wrote an email to Pirelli suggesting an extra set of tires to be used by Friday drivers. Well I guess it would have cars on track, but we pay to watch the real drivers, not the reserve team. How would football fans like it if the teams put their reserves out for the first half?

To digress and follow the football analogy, why is motor sport stuck on this performance balancing? Success ballast? Manchester United players would be wearing diving belts by now. Federer would have a heavier or smaller racquet. They all do it one way or another, spec racing or regulations so restrictive that it may as well be. NASCAR thinks having 43 cars within a second and racing in big packs is what the spectators want. It did not seem a problem when Richard Petty won 200 races back when the sport was growing. There is an old saying that if you develop a better mousetrap the government will invent a better mouse. Well the FIA and NASCAR have done that very well lately. What happened to racing as innovation? There is a good article on where the "United Sports Car Series" should go:

http://www.racer.com/opinion-back-to-the-future-for-american-sports-car-racing/article/285560/

Without innovation where would the Chapmans and Halls be? Like Adrian Newey. Every new idea gets trodden on. You can't do that, all the teams will have to do it. So what, isn't that the point. And then there is the cost containment mantra. Let them spend what they want, if they go broke so what? Look at Rangers in Scottish Football. They survive even if it is back to square one. How about a relegation system for F1? Impossible you say, but what if the GP2 winner of 2012 is told he will get the spot in 2014 of the last team in 2013. That gives them a year to get ready, and if the winner does not want it then offer it down. Get some fresh blood in.

Bernie has success ballast of course. If you win you get loaded down with bags of money, bit like the Premier League actually, except if you try and spend it the FIA will stop you, or now take more off you. Bernie giveth and the FIA taketh away.

Sorry to wander around, but this blog is about what stirs me. Joe Saward has a great piece in his blog today about the disclaimer on Mercedes press releases:

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

Scroll down it is the third or fourth article. Now you will have heard me talk about "the suits," the corporate men who run things now, lawyers and accountants. Well if you ever needed convincing then this disclaimer will do it. I know Mercedes is a public company and they need to be careful with what they publish, but this is a race team, a separate entity!

Talking of suits reminds me of "the blazers." These are another dangerous species in our sport, the people in the sporting bodies who spend their life being elected to higher and higher positions nationally and finally internationally. One of these, the FIA, has organized a conference this year at Goodwood to discuss the future of the sport. Being interested I checked it out, and who do you think the attendees are? The ASNs, the FIA member bodies. I would have thought that if they knew how to fix the current problems they would be doing it? How about bringing in the stakeholders, the people who have money invested in the sport. Teams, promoters, manufacturers, sponsors, drivers, and the media, and maybe Joe Blow public? This remind me of going to the FIM where the only people allowed to talk where the "blazers."

And so back to Sepang for practice two, at 2 am my time. Alarm set, ready to go, and so were the drivers this time. We were treated to lots of shots of some very nasty looking tires, but we are assured that the track is "rubbering in." I bet it is with that amount coming off the tires. We saw the usual suspects at the top of the time sheets, but as always it is hard to work out who is actually doing what. It is great that Johnny Herbert can hear and spot what is going on in the car, but at that time in the morning I am not awake enough to notice. Inevitably the rain arrived with 30 minutes to go. What did the teams do? Go out on inters to see what conditions where like in case it rained on Sunday? Hell no, they sat in the garage to save the inters, and I went back to sleep. It was bad enough when we saw teams saving tires in Q3, but it has now spread to the whole weekend, it is time this nonsense ends. If you want to know why spectator racing is dying, it is because the show is bad and getting worse.

Those of us that live here in the US, and trust me I love to live here, have to suffer through the worst race coverage thanks to SPEED and now NBC. SPEED, aka "The NASCAR Channel and those things owned by NASCAR, "showed the Sebring 8 Hour yesterday. Yes I know it is a 12 hour race, but it seems they did not. Despite Bob Varsha promising we will not miss any of the action they promptly signed off and went to NASCAR practice, not a race, for an hour. They then came back for an afternoon of the usual "infomercials" for other shows on Fox stations, Michelin, Chevrolet, Mazda etc, broken up by the inane commentary. I say commentary, but it is actually huckstering for the series as the station has a vested interest in telling us this is the best racing on earth. How about some honest reporting, and oh yes, some silence so we can hear the cars?

I watched the F1 race via live streaming of Sky, and was delighted when their pit reporter just held his microphone out during a Ferrari pit stop so we could hear it, without the necessary female telling us they were putting on Pirelli tires. SPEED meanwhile left the 12 hour race at 7:30 PM, with three hours to go, and crossed to watch AMA Supercross. That tells me how sports car racing rates! They were to come back at 10:30 pm, and as the race started at 10:45 am we were to be treated to the last couple of laps and the podiums, or a taped delayed version once the result was known by anyone with a computer. Needless to say I did not bother. An endurance race is complex, and it is impossible to follow who is where in each class and on what strategy when the broadcast is so broken up and commentators so stupid. For some reason Radio Le Mans was not working.

Over at NBC, who are covering the F1 races this year, things are very similar. Practice and qualifying sessions were scheduled about an hour or so after the actual times they are going on. Do they think we are stupid? Don't answer that. They obviously think the average viewer is by what they show on Network TV. I cannot complain about their commentators as I did not watch NBC, but knowing Leigh Diffey is one of them is enough. Makes me cringe as an Aussie.

I would guess that most of you have read the book "The Art of Racing in the Rain." Good book, and so popular the FIA have brought you a sequal, "Racing in the Slightly Wet." It is more of a serial, as it happens often during the year, the latest edition being Melbourne qualifying last night, for me anyway. I got up at 2 am to watch, and like so many I would guess gave up at 3 am and went back to sleep.

The FIA have regulated themselves almost into NASCAR where we cannot race if it rains a bit. NASCAR must laugh when they see the high tech brooms being wielded by marshals to dry the track. How did we get to a point where it is not possible to stay on the track when it rains? The stupid regulation putting cars into parc ferme when qualifying starts. Now I understand how that started, but like always they go too far. No one wants to go back to 1000 hp plus qualy engines good for two laps, but the current restrictions go too far. If teams could alter ride height and change wings for more downforce we might see some racing, instead of the medical car running around. Common sense is not very common it seems. Why not just draw lots for starting grid, the current system is just a lottery anyway, and is damaging cars.

No one wants to see drivers hurt racing in unsafe conditions, but there must be a happy medium here. And what's the idea of three sets of rain tires other than to save Pirelli money? Are we being "green?" We will get to a wet race one weekend where they use all the tires and the race is cancelled. If teams had more tires they could be out circulating and moving water off the track, instead of sitting in the garage saving tires.

Oh yes, then we have the 5 pm start time thanks to Bernie to suit European viewers. If the US is so important then why do we have to watch at 2 am? We saw in Malaysia a few years ago the problems a delay then causes, and we saw it again last night, because it was almost night in Melbourne by the time they gave up. The next call will be for two day GPs again if you can fit in Qualifying and race on Sunday.