Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Formula One returned to the A-1 Ring in Austria. Call me old fashioned but I am old enough to remember when they raced there before and Red Bull Ring does not do anything for me. This sign of obvious consumption has become somewhat odious to me. So quite happy when their cars failed to perform. It is strange that they were so far off the pace at a track with high speed corners that you would think would suit their good aero and road holding.

I have always liked this track, I guess due to the good use of the topography. Tilke did not do too much damage to it except to provide acres of asphalt and gravel run off. Pity he did not use some of that asphalt on some access roads by all account. Still, the crowd arrived and it was good to see, a bit like the Hungaroring in the early days. I expected overtaking to be difficult and limited to a couple of spots, but no, we were treated to some great moves. The best has to be Hamilton on Alonso at Turn 8 on the first lap, massive commitment on a fast corner. This track with 9 corners showed that you do not need 20 corners to provide a good race.

I do have a couple of issues though. Pit in should start before Turn 8, not after it, and there were a few close calls. Repainting the white line was like changing deck chairs on the Titanic. And then there is the asphalt emergency access strips at the exit of Turn 9 which almost caught out a couple of cars and launch them into the barrier. Shades of the BMW at Mid-Ohio.

Surprising that Mercedes struggled with overheating again. I expected a team with such an engineering base would have got on top of that immediately after Canada, and they had announced they had. Back to the drawing board.

For the last few years we have seen the Red Bull/Vettel Dynasty rule F1, and now it appears we are to have a Mercedes period. A few people are probably already saying that this is going to be boring, but I for one welcome the change and applaud the engineering behind the car.

At least it is about the car. No one is suggesting that Lewis is suddenly a superman, above all other drivers like we had with Vettel. When he kept winning a few of us were unkind enough to suggest that put any one of the top drivers in that car and they would dominate. But no we were told, it is Sebastian, he is so much better than the rest. Well this year the Emperor has no clothes.

Despite being told that this complex new formula would suit his intelligent driving what do we see. "Struggling with set up." A four time World Champion struggling with set up while his novice team mate is "faster than you are." We are also told Daniel is faster because he is more used to cars with less downforce than Vettel. Didn't Ricciardo race a F1 car with diffusers for the last couple of years? Hasn't most of the field raced cars with diffusers, including Hamilton, Rosberg and Alonso etc? No, now he no longer has a dominant car we are seeing what we suspected, he is very good but no better than them with a  spoilt brat attitude and he is a sore loser. As Mark Webber used to say, "the toys are coming out of the pram."

In contrast we see other top drivers just getting on with it. Lewis is totally focussed, not god like, and while Nico hates coming second to him there is no whining to be heard. Alonso is arguably doing the best job in a second class car, as he has for some years now. Yes he occasionally has a moan, but who wouldn't driving your guts out with little or no reward.

So another good race in China, not quite Bahrain, but Nico made it interesting with a bad start, and Massa with a too good one. Pretty stout suspension on these cars. What is interesting is how Lewis is using so much less fuel while running away from the pack. We have seen before that getting out in front allows you to run your own race and choose the ideal race lines, part of Vettel's secret.

Interesting WEC race at Silverstone. Pity I did not have access to live streaming and of course a World Championship does not warrant coverage here in the US. Still, with Radio Le Mans who needs pictures. They paint the scene extremely well, and actually provide far more information as to what is happening throughout the field than TV does. Well done Toyota, and Porsche. Audi uncharacteristically had both cars DNF. Crashed out through what appeared to be driver error. We have seen this before at Le Mans a couple of years ago. I am not saying they are not great drivers, but perhaps the pressure put on them by Toyota is part of the story. Of course there could have been something involving the car that led to Treluyer spearing right at Copse and hitting the inside barrier, which in a way is worse if there is an issue with the car. Both tubs damaged and Audi working against the clock to have them ready for Spa. 

Interesting discussion on Radio Le Mans about a WEC round in Oz, and where to stage it. Adelaide and Phillip Island were the two first choices, both a Barnard track, so very chuffed.

We have other dynasties going on with the Brabhams and the Gardners. Grandsons of Sir Jack Brabham and sons of David are both continuing the family tradition. Mathew Brabham is a rookie in Indy Lights here in the US, and doing OK, and Sam is racing in British Formula Ford with some success over the weekend. Watch out for these two.

Then there are Luca and Remy Gardner, both racing in the Spanish National Championship, the CEV, which is the proving ground for young hopefuls making it into MotoGP. Both learning their craft amongst tough opposition and stepping up each year under Dad's guidance. I hope to see something of them in Spain later this year. Pity Australia cannot produce the kind of racing that would develop talent to make the top tier in the world.

I am not talking about the lights at Bahrain but one of the best races I have seen for years! So this is "taxi cab" racing is it Mr. Montezemolo? I saw the look on your face as the Force India steamed past your Ferrari on the straight and as you turned away I thought "he's going home." And he was. What a joke all that BS from Bernie and Montezemolo about the state of F1. Good on Todt for turning them down.

There were passes all over the track and great racing. Ricciardo passed Vettel twice, good on you Aussie, shows how good Vettel really is. The Mercedes pair put on a show, and it was great to see Rosberg's reaction when he got out of the car. I was fearing a lot of pouting, but no. Naturally he wanted to beat Lewis, and only Lewis knows how he did not, but he said on the podium that it was the best race of his life. It looked it from where we sat. The Mercs finally showed their true pace in those last 12 laps after the safety car, pulling out 22 seconds over Perez who also has Mercedes power. Normally two drivers fighting like that slow each other down. The race time was 98 minutes against last year's V8's 96 minutes, so who says these are slow? Allowing for a lot of laps behind the pace car they are probably faster.

Paddy Lowe and the boys must have been dying on that pit wall watching that. I was excited about the prospect of these two fighting even before the race started, and they did not let us down. Good on you Mercedes for letting them race. What a season we have in store.

How Lewis held off Nico on those harder tires shows just how good he is, not to knock Nico, but he is a racer. Not sure how Vettel gets away with running people off the track like that, and what can we say about Maldonado? 5 grid places for that when Ricciardo got 10 for a loose wheel in pit lane? Come on Stewards, sort yourselves out. Shades of Grosjean at Spa.

These new low noses have been questioned already for just the sort of accident we saw yesterday. If it were the Mercedes or McLaren nose it may not have happened, but when changing rules we have to look at all angles of impact, not just from behind.

Talking of exciting races it is now 25 years since the first World Championship Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix at Phillip Island. A lot of memories, and AMCN is having a special edition to recall some of them. Some of them are better left unsaid. It was a very difficult time with much personal pain and stress to pull it off. We stupidly believed that if we showed just how great this race could be we would receive the support we needed. But no, it just brought out the rats who then wanted what we created.

A few examples of splits showed up during the Bahrain GP, some between people, some mechanical and some track related.

Mark Hughes had a great piece on Sky Sport about how Mercedes have managed to build a car/engine combination so much better than everyone else. They have split the Turbo. No it does not leak. The turbo consists of a turbine driven by the exhaust gas and a compressor that raises the pressure of the air entering the engine. Traditionally these are in one unit, one body, so the heat from the exhaust impacts the air in the compressor. This has to be cooled before it enters the engine to maximise the density, so there is an "intercooler" like a radiator mounted in a side pod, adding to the drag. The team suggested to the engine guys at Mercedes that if they were split, one on each end of the engine, then that problem would be lessened. So that's what they did, with a shaft through the block to drive the compressor. Intercooler size goes down, and the size of the unit on the back of the engine reduced so the engine cover can be tighter. The battery and gearbox also run cooler, etc. etc. Very, very clever. One of those "what if" someone asks that makes the light bulb go on.

As Mercedes designed the car around this concept they could maximise the benefits, but the other customer cars did not have time to, so they still have a benefit, but not maximised. The real hit for the non-Mercedes cars is that they cannot copy it, the engines are "frozen." Nice one. And thank you Mark for another great piece of journalism. This is Formula One, not just a bunch of noisy cars.

The other split is between Adrian Newey and Joe Saward, both angry men. Adrian hates the current rules. Would he still hate them if he were winning? He says yes, but we can only wonder. He said "It should be about man and machine performing at its maximum every lap." Well anyone watching the TV can see the drivers are performing to their limit, much more than we have seen for years. The cars are no longer on rails, glued to the track by Newey's aerodynamics. Just what Ferrari wanted, but now they have it and their engine is not good enough they want to change it too. Adrian should have watched his driver Sebestian over-performing at Turn 2 in the 3rd practice.

He goes on to say "The cars are going a lot slower and that should be factored in when we talk about the whole. OK, they are using 50 kilos less fuel, but they are going a lot slower to achieve that." Really, what timing screen is he watching? His own cars obviously. Pole time this year is less than a second slower than last, with harder tires and 50 kg more weight in the car. Top speeds are higher. Monza is predicted to be 360 km/hr! Over 225 mph. Slower? This is not an economy run, the cars are being driven to their limit over the same race distance at similar speeds with 33% less fuel due the design of the car, not by the drivers driving slower. As I said after Australia, imagine if this translates to road cars?

Joe Saward is also angry about the Ferrari's and Red Bulls of this world whining about the rules. As I said yesterday, how does he keep his press pass?

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/top-of-the-flops/

The additional set of tires for Q3 has certainly helped at keeping all the cars on track for the Q2 & 3 sessions, but we now have the teams not running in practice sessions. Mercedes did very few laps any session, did not need to, but Williams were concerned at putting too much heat stress in the power unit and sat out most of the time. The fact that the teams tested here for two weeks recently undoubtedly played a part. They knew the set up so saved the car. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next races. Teams are already using up components at a fast rate, so we will see grid penalties later in the season.

Now for the track split. In the barrier there are regular openings to allow emergency access and to allow cars to be pulled back off the track. They are called "regulation gaps" as there are regulations as to how they are installed. The lead edge is supposed to stay in line, with the trailing edge curving into line behind. This is the main straight at Bahrain.  

Not a great photo but you can enlarge. The leading edge turns in towards the track. I can't imagine why I have never noticed this, but if you hit that end then it will not only hurt but it will throw the car back on the track. Not a good idea. So how does Tilke design this, and worse, how do the FIA approve it?

In a similar vein the curb at Turn 4 was altered to install a "sausage" raised section behind the existing. This is the orange piece we see at lots of tracks now, but at the apex on slow corners, not a fast exit where it can be struck end on. So if you watched practice yesterday you would have seen a Lotus do just that and launch itself. They removed the "sausage" last night, but who approved it in the first place?

First day's, or should that be day and evening's, practice completed with Mercedes looking well in control of the situation. Still plenty to keep us interested though, with half a second covering the next eight cars. Fuel consumption is going to be an issue it seems for the first time this year, but as we saw in Malaysia Hamilton was very light on his fuel use. The advantage of running your own race at the front as we saw so many times for Vettel. Not much difference in tire degradation between the medium and soft compounds, so the soft is going to be the tire to use as it is way faster. Over two seconds it appears, although some of that may be down to the cooler temperatures in the second session.

The fear that these cars will be slow is unfounded, with the Mercedes basically matching the fast time from this same session a year ago. And it seems people are getting used to the noise of these cars, all except Ferrari fans that is. Montezemolo is meeting with Bernie and Todt to talk about rule changes. Really, after three races? Smacks of Red Bull and tires last year. We can't compete with these rules so let's change them. I can't believe Todt is going to go along with that after the battle to get these current cars. Then there is the conspiracy theory that Bernie is just trying to devalue the sport so he can get CVC bought out by his mates, who would not care if he is convicted or not.

On that subject Joe Saward must have had too much time on his hands and has written a very funny blog on the "zoo" that is Formula One. I don't know how he keeps his press pass.

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/the-f1-jungle-book/